Kings, Queens, and Pawns | Page 4

then, over there, beyond
the horizon, "somewhere in France"?
And now that I have been beyond the dead line many of these questions
have answered themselves. France is saying nothing, and fighting
magnificently, Belgium, with two-thirds of her army gone, has still
fifty thousand men, and is preparing two hundred thousand more.
Instead of merely an honorary position, she is holding tenaciously,
against repeated onslaughts and under horrible conditions, the flooded
district between Nieuport and Dixmude. England, although holding
only thirty-two miles of front, beginning immediately south of Ypres, is
holding that line against some of the most furious fighting of the war,
and is developing, at the same time, an enormous fighting machine for
the spring movement.[A]
[Footnote A: This is written of conditions in the early spring of 1915.
Although the relative positions of the three armies are the same, the
British are holding a considerably longer frontage.]
The British soldier is well equipped, well fed, comfortably transported.
When it is remembered that England is also assisting to equip all the
allied armies, it will be seen that she is doing much more than holding
the high seas.
To see the wounded, then; to follow the lines of hospital trains to that
mysterious region, the front; to see the men in the trenches and in their
billets; to observe their morale, the conditions under which they
lived--and died. It was too late to think of the cause of the war or of the
justice or injustice of that cause. It will never be too late for its
humanities and inhumanities, its braveries and its occasional flinchings,
its tragedies and its absurdities.
It was through the assistance of the Belgian Red Cross that I got out of
England and across the Channel. I visited the Anglo-Belgian
Committee at its quarters in the Savoy Hotel, London, and told them of
my twofold errand. They saw at once the point I made. America was
sending large amounts of money and vast quantities of supplies to the

Belgians on both sides of the line. What was being done in interned
Belgium was well known. But those hospital supplies and other things
shipped to Northern France were swallowed up in the great silence. The
war would not be ended in a day or a month.
"Let me see conditions as they really are," I said. "It is no use telling
me about them. Let me see them. Then I can tell the American people
what they have already done in the war zone, and what they may be
asked to do."
Through a piece of good luck Doctor Depage, the president, had come
across the Channel to a conference, and was present. A huge man, in
the uniform of a colonel of the Belgian Army, with a great military
cape, he seemed to fill and dominate the little room.
They conferred together in rapid French.
"Where do you wish to go?" I was asked.
"Everywhere."
"Hospitals are not always cheerful to visit."
"I am a graduate of a hospital training-school. Also a member of the
American Red Cross."
They conferred again.
"Madame will not always be comfortable--over there."
"I don't want to be comfortable," I said bravely.
Another conference. The idea was a new one; it took some mental
readjustment. But their cause was just, and mingled with their desire to
let America know what they were doing was a justifiable pride. They
knew what I was to find out--that one of the finest hospitals in the
world, as to organisation, equipment and results, was situated almost
under the guns of devastated Nieuport, so close that the roar of artillery
is always in one's ears.

I had expected delays, a possible refusal. Everyone had encountered
delays of one sort and another. Instead, I found a most courteous and
agreeable permission given. I was rather dazed. And when, a day or so
later, through other channels, I found myself in possession of letters to
the Baron de Broqueville, Premier and Minister of War for Belgium,
and to General Melis, Inspector General of the Belgian Army Medical
Corps, I realised that, once in Belgian territory, my troubles would
probably be at an end.
For getting out of England I put my faith in a card given me by the
Belgian Red Cross. There are only four such cards in existence, and
mine was number four.
From Calais to La Panne! If I could get to Calais I could get to the front,
for La Panne is only four miles from Nieuport, where the confronting
lines of trenches begin. But Calais was under military law. Would I be
allowed to land?
Such writers as reached there were allowed twenty-four hours, and
were then shipped back across the Channel or to some innocuous
destination south. Yet this little card,