rouse myself to a new day's effort. There were times when I was faint
and sick and weak; and my colleagues were like me. But we struggled on
to tell the daily history of the war and the public cursed us because
we did not tell more, or sneered at us because they thought we were
"spoon-fed" by G. H. Q.--who never gave us any news and who were far
from our way of life, except when they thwarted us, by petty
restrictions and foolish rules.




VIII


The Commander-in-Chief--Sir John French--received us when we were
first attached to the British armies in the field--a lifetime ago, as
it seems to me now. It was a formal ceremony in the chateau near
St.-Omer, which he used as his own headquarters, with his A. D. C.'s
in attendance, though the main general headquarters were in the town.
Our first colonel gathered us like a shepherd with his flock, counting
us twice over before we passed in. A tall, dark young man, whom I knew
afterward to be Sir Philip Sassoon, received us and chatted pleasantly
in a French salon with folding-doors which shut off an inner room.
There were a few portraits of ladies and gentlemen of France in the
days before the Revolution, like those belonging to that old
aristocracy which still existed, in poverty and pride, in other
chateaus in this French Flanders. There was a bouquet of flowers on
the table, giving a sweet scent to the room, and sunlight streamed
through the shutters. . . I thought for a moment of the men living in
ditches in the salient, under harassing fire by day and night. Their