When we came back from the Loire in September, after our temporary retreat, the British _personnel_ at this place grew from 1,100 to 11,000 in a week. Now there are thousands of troops always passing through, thousands of men in hospital, thousands at work in the docks and storehouses. And let any one who cares for horses go and look at the Remount Depot and the Veterinary Hospitals. The whole treatment of horses in this war has been revolutionised. Look at the cheap, ingenious stables, the comfort produced by the simplest means, the kind quiet handling; look at the Convalescent Horse Depots, the operating theatres, and the pharmacy stores in the Veterinary Hospitals. As to the troops themselves, every Regiment has its own lines, for its own reinforcements. Good food, clean cooking, civilised dining-rooms, excellent sanitation--the base provides them all. It provides, too, whatever else Tommy Atkins wants, and _close at hand_; wet and dry canteens, libraries, recreation huts, tea and coffee huts, palatial cinemas, concerts. And what are the results? Excellent behaviour; excellent relations between the British soldier and the French inhabitants; absence of all serious crime. Then look at the docks. You will see there armies of labourers, and long lines of ships discharging horses, timber, rations, fodder, coal, coke, petrol. Or at the stores and depots. It would take you days to get any idea of the huge quantities of stores, or of the new and ingenious means of space economy and quick distribution. As to the Works Department--camps and depots are put up "while you wait" by the R.E. officers and unskilled military labour. Add to all this the armies of clerks, despatch riders, and motor-cyclists--and the immense hospital _personnel_--then, if you make any intelligible picture of it in your mind, you will have some idea of what bases like these mean. Pondering these notes, it seemed to me that the only way to get some kind of "intelligible picture" in two short days was to examine something in detail, and the rest in general! Accordingly, we spent a long Sunday morning in the Motor Transport Depot, which is the creation of Colonel B., and perhaps as good an example as one could find anywhere in France of the organising talent of the able British officer.