_Sunday, 28 February._

MY DEAR FAMILY,

It is so long since I wrote a decently long letter that I think I must
write to you all, to thank you for yours, and to give you what news
there is of myself.

Of war news there is none. The long war is now a long wait, and the huge
expense still goes on, while we lock horns with our foes and just sway
backwards and forwards a little, and this, as you know, we have done for
weeks past. Every day at the station there is a little stream of men
with heads or limbs bandaged, and our work goes on as before, although
it is not on quite the same lines now. I used to make every drop of the
soup myself, and give it out all down the train. Now we have a
receiving-room for the wounded, where they stay all day, and we feed
them four times, and then they are sent away. The whole thing is more
military than it used to be, the result, I think, of officers not having
much to do, and with a passion for writing out rules and regulations
with a nice broad pen. Two orderlies help in the kitchen, the soup is
"inspected," and what used to be "la cuisine de la dame écossaise" is
not so much a charitable institution as it was.

One sees a good deal of that sort of thing during this war. Women have
been seeing what is wanted, and have done the work themselves at really
enormous difficulty, and in the face of opposition, and when it is a
going concern it is taken over and, in many cases, the women are turned
out. This was the case at Dunkirk station, which was known everywhere as
"the shambles." I myself tried to get the wounded attended to, and I
went there with a naval doctor, who told me that he couldn't uncover a