And the fog of initials is symbolic in a double manner; for not only do the initials stand for what they represent to those who know, but in their very lack of meaning for those who do not, they typify with a peculiar aptness the fact that after all we at home in England, particularly we ladies of England who live at home in ease, know very little indeed of even what the letters B.E.F. stand for. We have hazy ideas on the subject. Vaguely we know, for instance, that there are women, lots of women, working out in France, though quite at what, beyond nursing, we don't seem to know. Motor drivers ... of course, yes, we have heard of them. There is a vague impression that they are having the time of their lives, probably being quite useful too ... but of the technique of the thing, so to speak, what do we know? About as much as we know when we first hear the clouds of initials rattling like shrapnel about our heads if we go over to France. And if we at home know so little, how can other countries know, who have no inner working knowledge of English temperaments and training to go upon as a rough guide to at least the probable trend of things? How can we expect them to know? And yet knowledge of what every section of the working community is doing was never so vital as at the present moment, because never before has so much of the world been working together on the same job--and the biggest job in history. It is always a good thing to know what other folk are doing, even when they are not your sort, and what they are doing does not affect you, because it teaches proportion and widens vision--how much more important, then, when what they are doing is what you are doing too, or what you may yet come to do? Gentle reader--and even more especially ungentle reader--if in these pages I occasionally ask you to listen to my own personal confession both of faith and of unfaith--please realise that it is not because I imagine there is any particular interest in my way of seeing things, but simply because it is only so that I can make you see them too. You are looking through my window, that is all, and it is not even a window that I opened for myself, but that had to be opened for me. If you will realise that I went and saw all I did see, not as myself, but as you, it will give you the idea I am wishful to convey to you. Anything I feel is only valuable because my feeling of it may mean your feeling of it too. Therefore, when you read "I" in these pages, don't say "Here's this person talking of herself again ..." say "Here am I, myself. This person only saw these things so that I should see them." If you don't it will be nine-tenths my fault and one-tenth your own.