A Journal of Impressions in Belgium by Sinclair

Page 1 of 112

A JOURNAL OF IMPRESSIONS IN BELGIUM

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO . DALLAS ATLANTA . SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED

LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.

TORONTO

A JOURNAL OF IMPRESSIONS IN BELGIUM

MAY SINCLAIR

Author of "The Three Sisters," "The Return of The Prodigal," etc.

New York

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1915

_All rights reserved_

BY MAY SINCLAIR

Set up and electrotyped. Published, September, 1915

DEDICATION

(_To a Field Ambulance in Flanders_)

I do not call you comrades, You, Who did what I only dreamed. Though you have taken my dream, And dressed yourselves in its beauty and its glory, Your faces are turned aside as you pass by. I am nothing to you, For I have done no more than dream.

Your faces are like the face of her whom you follow, Danger, The Beloved who looks backward as she runs, calling to her lovers, The Huntress who flies before her quarry, trailing her lure. She called to me from her battle-places, She flung before me the curved lightning of her shells for a lure; And when I came within sight of her, She turned aside, And hid her face from me.

But you she loved; You she touched with her hand; For you the white flames of her feet stayed in their running; She kept you with her in her fields of Flanders, Where you go, Gathering your wounded from among her dead. Grey night falls on your going and black night on your returning. You go Under the thunder of the guns, the shrapnel's rain and the curved lightning of the shells, And where the high towers are broken, And houses crack like the staves of a thin crate filled with fire; Into the mixing smoke and dust of roof and walls torn asunder You go; And only my dream follows you.

That is why I do not speak of you, Calling you by your names. Your names are strung with the names of ruined and immortal cities, Termonde and Antwerp, Dixmude and Ypres and Furnes, Like jewels on one chain--

Thus, In the high places of Heaven, They shall tell all your names.

MAY SINCLAIR.

March 8th, 1915.

INTRODUCTION

This is a "Journal of Impressions," and it is nothing more. It will not satisfy people who want accurate and substantial information about Belgium, or about the War, or about Field Ambulances and Hospital Work, and do not want to see any of these things "across a temperament." For the Solid Facts and the Great Events they must go to such books as Mr. E. A. Powell's "Fighting in Flanders," or Mr. Frank Fox's "The Agony of Belgium," or Dr. H. S. Souttar's "A Surgeon in Belgium," or "A Woman's Experiences in the Great War," by Louise Mack.

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