Only the President remains imperturbable. For, after all this fuming and fretting, the President isn't quite ready himself, or perhaps the Town Hall isn't ready, and we all stroll about the streets of Ostend for half an hour. And the Commandant goes off by himself, to buy that hat. It is a terrible half-hour. But after all, he comes back without it, judging it better to bear the ills he has. Very leisurely, and with an immense consumption of time, we stroll and get photographed for our passports. Then on to the Town Hall, and then to the Military Depot for our _Laissez-passer_, and then to the Hotel Terminus for lunch. And at one-thirty we are off. Whatever happens, whatever we see and suffer, nothing can take from us that run from Ostend to Ghent. We go along a straight, flat highway of grey stones, through flat, green fields and between thin lines of trees--tall and slender and delicate trees. There are no hedges. Only here and there a row of poplars or pollard willows is flung out as a screen against the open sky. This country is formed for the very expression of peace. The straight flat roads, the straight flat fields and straight tall trees stand still in an immense quiet and serenity. We pass low Flemish houses with white walls and red roofs. Their green doors and shutters are tall and slender like the trees, the colours vivid as if the paint had been laid on yesterday. It is all unspeakably beautiful and it comes to me with the natural, inevitable shock and ecstasy of beauty. I am going straight into the horror of war. For all I know it may be anywhere, here, behind this sentry; or there, beyond that line of willows. I don't know. I don't care. I cannot realize it. All that I can see or feel at the moment is this beauty. I look and look, so that I may remember it. Is it possible that I am enjoying myself? I dare not tell Mrs. Torrence. I dare not tell any of the others. They seem to me inspired with an austere sense of duty, a terrible integrity. They know what they are here for. To me it is incredible that I should be here. I am in Car 1., sitting beside Tom, the chauffeur; Mrs. Torrence is on the other side of me. Tom disapproves of these Flemish roads. He cannot see that they are beautiful. They will play the devil with his tyres. I am reminded unpleasantly that our Daimler is not a touring car but a motor ambulance and that these roads will jolt the wounded most abominably. There are straggling troops on the road now. At the nearest village all the inhabitants turn out to cheer us. They cry out "_Les Anglais!_" and laugh for joy. Perhaps they think that if the British Red Cross has come the British Army can't be far behind. But when they hear that we are Belgian Red Cross they are gladder than ever. They press round us. It is wonderful to them that we should have come all the way from England "_pour les Belges!_" Somehow the beauty of the landscape dies before these crowding, pressing faces.