The most inspiring fact about the Channel ports at that time was the regularity with which steamers arrived, crowded with soldiers, and returned with wounded. We could see England on clear days from our quarters, and could follow the boats almost across. The number of trawlers at work all the year round, even in heavy gales that almost blew us off the cliffs, was enough to tell how vigilant a watch was being kept all the while. One morning only we woke to find a large stray steamer, that had entered the roads overnight, sunk across the harbour mouth, her decks awash at low water--torpedoed, we supposed. Another day a small patrol, literally cut in half by a mine, was towed in. But though both in the air and under the sea all the ingenuity of the enemy from as near by as Ostend was unceasingly directed against that living stream, not one single disaster happened the whole winter that I was out. Our mine-fields were constantly being changed. The different courses the traffic took from day to day suggested that. But who did it, and when, no one ever knew. The noise of occasional bomb-firing, once a mine rolling up on the shore, exploding and throwing some incredibly big fragments onto the golf links, the incessant tramp of endless soldiers in the street, the ever-present but silent motors hurrying to and fro, and the nightly arrival of convoys of wounded, were all that reminded us that any war was in progress. Had it been permitted, the beach would have been crowded as usual with invalids, nursemaids, and perambulators. The second marvel was that in spite of the enormous numbers of people coming and going, no secrets leaked out. We gave up looking for news almost as completely as in winter in Labrador. We seemed to be shut off entirely in an eddy of the stream, as we are in our Northern wastes. The spirit of humour in the wounded Briton was as invaluable as the love of sport when he is well. On one occasion a small party were going to relieve a section of the line. The Boches had the range of a piece of the road over which they had to pass, and the men made dashes singly or in small numbers across it. A lad, a well-known athlete, was caught by a shell and blown over a hedge into a field. When they reached him, his leg was gone and one arm badly smashed. He was sitting up smoking a cigarette, and all he said was, "Well, I fancy that's the end of my football days." One very undeveloped man, who had somehow leaked into Kitchener's Army, told me, "Well, you see, Major, I was a bit too weak for a labouring man, so I joined the army. I thought it might do my 'ealth good!" One of the English papers reported that when a small Gospel was sent by post to a prisoner in Germany the Teuton official stamped every page, "Passed by the Censor."