and day for about three weeks, without surcease for meals. This
calculation only increased my astonishment at the obstinate in-
discoverability of the Army.

Once I did get the sensation of fighting men existing in bulk. It was
at the baths of a new division--the New Army. I will mention in
passing that the real enthusiasm of Generals concerning the
qualities of the New Army was most moving--and enheartening.

The baths establishment was very British--much more British than
any of those operating it perhaps imagined. Such a phenomenon
could probably be seen on no other front. It had been contrived out
of a fairly large factory. It was in charge of a quite young subaltern,
no doubt anxious to go and fight, but condemned indefinitely to the
functions of baths-keeper. In addition to being a baths-keeper this
young subaltern was a laundry-manager; for when bathing the
soldiers left their underclothing and took fresh. The laundry was very
large; it employed numerous local women and girls at four francs a
day. It had huge hot drying-rooms where the women and girls
moved as though the temperature was sixty degrees instead of
being over a hundred. All these women and girls were beautiful, all
had charm, all were more or less ravishing--simply because for days
we had been living in a harsh masculine world--a world of motor-
lorries, razors, trousers, hob-nailed boots, maps, discipline, pure
reason, and excessively few mirrors. An interesting item of the
laundry was a glass-covered museum of lousy shirts, product of
prolonged trench-life in the earlier part of the war, and held by
experts to surpass all records of the kind!

The baths themselves were huge and simple--a series of gigantic