subjective. In my visits to the front and in such war-
work as I did at home, I witnessed many striking and even
entertaining things, and I saw them at moments of mental
concentration and exaltation which no doubt heightened
them and sometimes made them assume an interest and
importance not altogether their own.

The first visit to the front undertaken by me began on
the 8th of May, 1915, that memorable day on which was
received the news of the sinking of the Lusitania.

I shall not give any account of my feelings when hearing
for the first time a great cannonade, or seeing shells burst,
or catching a glimpse of the German line. Of all such
things none were or could afford an experience so terrible
as the sight I saw at Bailleul. A number of men still in
the agonies of gas-poisoning, men hovering between life
and death, lay on their stretchers in rows in the vestibule
of the Hospital, awaiting removal. They spoke in strange,
lifeless voices, like men recalled from death by some
potent spell. But on this unnecessary horror of war I do
not mean to dwell. I shall, however, quote from my War
Diary an account of a visit to the Scherpenberg, because
it gives a glimpse of a side of war too often neglected or
ignored.

May 10th, 1915: -- From the hospital we went to one of the
most wonderful places in the theatre of war, a place of which I
had heard a great deal, but not a word too much, from my
guide. This was the Scherpenberg. Directly overlooking the
plain in which Ypres stands are two hills, Scherpenberg and
Kemmel. Kemmel is constantly being pounded by artillery
fire of all sorts, but Scherpenberg, for some strange or at any
rate unknown reason, is never shelled, and the windmill on the
top of it is still going merrily. As I sat on the grass of the
hill-top, with the men working at the mill behind us and a
nightingale singing in the little hazel brake on our left, it was

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