Calais is under military law.
It is difficult to enter, almost impossible to leave in the direction
in which I wished to go. But here again the Belgian Red Cross achieved
the impossible. I was taken before the authorities, sharply
questioned, and in the end a pink slip was passed over to the official
of the Red Cross who was to take me to the front. I wish I could have
secured that pink slip, if only because of its apparent fragility and
its astounding wearing qualities. All told, between Calais and La
Panne it was inspected--texture, weight and reading matter, front and
reverse sides, upside down and under glass--by some several hundred
sentries, officials and petty highwaymen. It suffered everything but
attack by bayonet. I found myself repeating that way to madness of
Mark Twain's:
_Punch, brothers, punch with care,
Punch in the presence of the passenjaire,
A pink trip slip for a five-cent fare_--
and so on.
Northeast then, in an open grey car with "Belgian Red Cross" on each
side of the machine. Northeast in a bitter wind, into a desolate and
almost empty country of flat fields, canals and roads bordered by
endless rows of trees bent forward like marching men. Northeast
through Gravelines, once celebrated of the Armada and now a
manufacturing city. It is curious to think that a part of the Armada
went ashore at Gravelines, and that, by the shifting of the English
Channel, it is now two miles inland and connected with the sea by a
ship canal.
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