Our total loss in the retreat was exceedingly heavy--more than one hundred and thirty huts and other centres in Picardy and Flanders, and in cash, upwards of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Serious as was that loss it might have been very much worse. Eight trucks of stores and equipment were stopped in the nick of time. The axle of one of our big lorries broke within a hundred yards of the most heavily shelled area in one of the towns bombarded by the enemy, but it was got away and, excepting in two cases, all the money and notes from tills and cash-boxes were removed safely before the huts were abandoned--striking testimony to the devotion of those in charge. 'What I think impressed me most,' wrote the organising secretary for France, 'has been the undaunted spirit of our workers, who, when shelled out of huts, persisted in the attempt to return to them under very great personal danger.' 'Although we have lost everything that we had,' wrote one, 'we still have hope within us, and are trusting to get back right into the thick of things in the very near future.' Yet another, writing in the spirit of Eastertide, said, 'We believe that our work will rise in new freshness and power out of its apparent extinction!' 'There was a singular unanimity of effort on the part of the workers who were isolated one from the other, and had no opportunity of arranging a common policy. The sale of such articles as the soldiers needed continued in the huts up to the last moment possible, and then, when the danger of the hut and stores falling into the hands of the enemy became imminent, biscuits and cigarettes were handed out as largely as possible to men in the neighbourhood taking part in the fighting. One would have thought that having done this the workers would have considered their own personal safety and retired, but in several cases I found them running stunts for walking wounded in the open, outside the hut or in its immediate neighbourhood, in close touch with the medical authorities. 'The confusion of the retreat opened up to our workers opportunities of service which they gladly utilised. Last night was a night of uncertainty. We could not go to bed owing to the uncertainty of the military position where our headquarters were, and so stood on a high hill beside an old Trappist monastery, watching the village at the foot in flames, and trying to ascertain the progress of the fighting through the darkness. Our workers even under these circumstances seized an opportunity of doing a very fine bit of service. A stream of poor refugees were passing, people of all conditions and ages, fleeing for safety and shelter, and so at 11.30 at night at the cross-roads, a table was set up with a hot urn of cocoa and supplies of biscuits, which were handed out to French and Flemish people as they passed....