I brought the message-carrier home with me. On
its weighted canvas bag is written in ink: “Urgent!
You are requested to forward this at once to the inclosed
address. From His Majesty’s airship ——.”
The sight of the press-censor stamp reminded an English
officer, who had lived in Belgium, of the way letters
to and from interned Belgians have been taken over
the frontier into Holland and there dispatched.
Men who are willing to risk their lives for money collect
these letters. At one time the price was as high
as two hundred francs for each one. When enough
have been gathered together to make the risk worth
while the bearer starts on his journey. He must
slip through the sentry lines disguised as a workman,
or perhaps by crawling through the barbed wire at
the barrier. For fear of capture some of these
bearers, working their way through the line at night,
have dragged their letters behind them, so that in
case of capture they could drop the cord and be found
without incriminating evidence on them. For taking
letters into Belgium the process is naturally reversed.
But letters are sent, not to names, but to numbers.
The bearer has a list of numbers which correspond
to certain addresses. Thus, even if he is taken
and the letters are found on him, their intended recipients
will not be implicated. I saw a letter which
had been received in this way by a Belgian woman.
It was addressed simply to Number Twenty-eight.
The fire was burning better behind its automobile
hood. An orderly had brought in tea, white bread,
butter, a pitcher of condensed cream, and an English
teacake. We gathered round the tea table.
War seemed a hundred miles away. Except for the
blue uniforms and brass buttons of the officers who
belonged to the naval air service, the orderly’s
khaki and the bayonet from a gun used casually at the
other end of the table as a paperweight, it was an
ordinary English tea.
CHAPTER XXII
THE WOMEN AT THE FRONT
It was commencing to rain outside. The rain beat
on the windows and made even the reluctant fire seem
cosy. Some one had had a box of candy sent from
home. It was brought out and presented with a
flourish.
“It is frightful, this life in the trenches!”
said the young officer who passed it about.
Shortly afterward the party was increased. An
orderly came in and announced that an Englishwoman,
whose automobile had broken down, was standing on
the bridge over the canal and asked to be admitted.
She did not know the password and the sentry refused
to let her pass by.
One of the officers went out and returned in a few
moments with a small lady much wrapped in veils and
extremely wet. She stood blinking in the doorway
in the accustomed light. She was recognised at
once as a well-known English novelist who is conducting
a soup kitchen at a railroad station three miles behind
the Belgian front.
