This accounts, perhaps, for the French being a hot-blooded
people.
Of all the cities of the world that it has been my privilege to visit,
the city of Havre is the dirtiest, the ugliest, and the least
interesting. We could find no public buildings with even the slightest
pretence to beauty, and the rest of the city was as dull and
commercial as it is possible for a seaport town to be; one can say
little more than that, in consideration of any city. With the
exception of the docks and the casino there is nothing of interest,
and even the casino, like all the casinos in France, had been
converted into a hospital.
After two days of killing time, our orders came through to leave for
the front, two of us to go by motor and the rest by train. Our
experience with the British officer at the base had certainly been
pleasant and proved to be a happy augury of our future relationships
with them. The British officer in France is quite a different man from
the same officer in England, and does not impress you with the fact
that the war is being carried on by his individual efforts.
At the base we learned for the first time that we had been a great
source of anxiety to some of the officials of the British army three
weeks before, when the war office had announced our departure from
England. When we had failed to report our arrival at Havre the
authorities had assumed that we, being Canadians and more or less
independent, had gone off on a little trip of our own into the
interior of France.
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