shelter for them and his need for assistance was acute.  Within a few hours the Red Cross had despatched eight workers—­a doctor, nurse, bacteriologist, an administrative director and two women to take charge of the bedding, food and clothing.  A camionette loaded with condensed milk and other relief necessities was sent by road.  On the arrival of the party, they found the children herded together in old barracks, dirty and unfurnished, with no sanitary appliances whatsoever.  The sick were crowded together with the well.  Of the 350 children, twenty-one were under one year of age, and the rest between one and eight years.  The reason for this sudden crisis was that the Huns were bombing the villages behind the lines with asphyxiating gas.  The military authorities had therefore withdrawn all children who were too young to adjust their masks themselves, at the same time urging their mothers to carry on the patriotic duty of gathering in the harvest.  It was the machinery of mercy which had been built up in six months about this nucleus of eight persons that I set out to visit.

The roads were crowded with the crack troops of France—­the Foreign Legion, the Tailleurs, the Moroccans—­all marching in one direction, eastward to the trenches.  There were rumours of something immense about to happen—­no one knew quite what.  Were we going to put on a new offensive or were we going to resist one?  Many answers were given:  they were all guesswork.  Meanwhile, our progress was slow; we were continually halting to let brigades of artillery and regiments of infantry pour into the main artery of traffic from lanes and side-roads.  When we had backed our car into hedges to give them room to pass, we watched the sea of faces.  They were stern and yet laughing, elated and yet childish, eloquent of the love of living and yet familiar with their old friend, Death.  They knew that something big was to be demanded of them; before the demand had been made, they had determined to give to the ultimate of their strength.  There was a spiritual resolution about their faces which made all their expressions one—­the uplifted expression of the unconquered soul of France.  That expression blotted out their racial differences.  It did not matter that they were Arabs, Negroes, Normans, Parisians; they owned to one nationality—­the nationality of martyrdom—­and they marched with a single purpose, that freedom might be restored to the world.

When we reached the city to which we journeyed, night had fallen.  There was something sinister about our entry; we were veiled in fog, and crept through the gate and beneath the ramparts with extinguished head lights.  Scarcely any one was abroad.  Those whom we passed, loomed out of the mist in silence, passed stealthily and vanished.