Four A.M.: the slowly moving engine comes to a standstill with a jolt which wakes me from the uneasy half-sleep of a train journey. I lift a corner of the blind and look out. It is the grey hour before the dawn, when night still wrestles with morning for the possession of the coming day. A ruined building lit up by a station flare stares at me stark and desolate. In the quarter light a long street of battered houses is also dimly visible. Lille! We have come through the worst of the devastated area in the night, but the hall-mark of the invader lies stamped on the big industrial town, the very name of which is associated henceforth with suspense, with anguish, with triumph. The military train begins to move again cautiously over temporary bridges and a permanent way not as yet permanently repaired. We are far removed from the days when continental expresses and sleeping-cars swept in a few hours from one capital to another. The miracle is to be in this slow-moving train at all which links the British base in France with the occupied German area. Ruined houses look in through the window, phantom buildings of which nothing but the outer walls remain. Yet, as I strain my eyes in the dim light, I see something else; something which was not visible when I last visited a devastated area in March--here and there a house already rebuilt, stacks of bricks neatly piled, rubbish sifted and cleared, stones laid in order for the mason’s hand. Yes, there has been “cleaning up” during the last five months--the most tragic cleaning up which can ever befall a nation. And clearly France, with her amazing energy and recuperative powers, has already flung herself into the task of repairing the desolate places. It is a grim and mighty task which awaits our Ally. Stricken though the towns, the land, desolate, barren, uncultivated, has a pathos all its own. As we move ever eastwards and the dawn comes up in the sky, the nakedness of the fields invaded by coarse grass and weeds symbolises the sufferings of France. But in the growing light evidences appear in the fields of the same brave spirit which is reclaiming the towns. Here and there a half-destroyed farmhouse has been patched up, and a thin cloud of smoke rises from the battered chimney. Across the silent fields a team of horses is being led out to work; a woman drives out her cows or is seen surrounded by clamorous poultry. France may be sorely wounded, but the spirit of France cannot be destroyed. France, for all her losses, has hope in her heart, and amid the desolation of war, hope, like some beautiful flower, blossoms once again.