"We have to keep the roads clear for military necessity. This is the order in which we have to regard the use of roads in war-time." He checked off his list on his fingers—

"First comes ammunition, then food, then reinforcements, and fourth, the wounded."

[141]

[141]

 IN RAMSKAPPELE BARNYARD

Thirteen dead men were scattered about in the straw and dung. Some of them were sitting in absurd postures, as if they were actors in a pantomime. Others of them, though burned and shattered, lay peacefully at full length. No impress of torture could any longer rob them of the rest on which they had entered so suddenly. I saw that each one of them had come to the end of his quest and had found the thing for which he had been searching. The Frenchman had his equality now. The German had doubtless by this time, found his God "a mighty fortress." The Belgian had won a neutrality which nothing would ever invade.

As I looked on that barnyard of dead, I was glad for them that they were dead, and not as the men I had seen in the hospital wards—the German with his leg being [142]sawn off, and the strange bloated face of the Belgian: all those maimed and broken men condemned to live and carry on the living flesh the pranks of shell fire. For it was surely better to be torn to pieces and to die than to be sent forth a jest.

[142]

VI THE CHEVALIER

Hilda's friends in England had prepared a "surprise" for her. It was engineered by a wise and energetic old lady in London, who had been charmed with the daring of the American girl at the front. So, without Hilda's knowledge, she published the following advertisement:—

"'HILDA'—Will every Hilda, big and little, in Great Britain and Ireland, send contributions for a 'Hilda' motor ambulance, costing £500, to be sent for service in Pervyse, to save wounded Belgian soldiers from suffering? It will be run by a nurse named Hilda. 'Lady Hildas' subscribe a guinea, 'Hildas' over sixteen, half-guinea, 'Little Hildas', and 'Hildas' in straightened circumstances, two-shillings-and-sixpence."

[144]

[144]

 Prev. P 57/84 next