The men beside whom they marched or rode when depots canteens, and headquarters disappeared in the general over-running of our fighting lines, took note! It was yet another page in that history of a new Womanhood we are all collaborating in to-day.

And I will add a last touch, within my personal knowledge, when in January, at Montreuil, in a room at G.H.Q., an officer of A.described to me how he had recently interviewed a gathering of women belonging to Queen Mary's Auxiliary Army Corps, and had asked them whether they wished to be immediately demobilised.

Almost without exception the answer came: "Not while we can be useful to the Army." They had enlisted for the war; the war was not over, in spite of the Armistice; and, though it would be pleasant to go home, they still stuck to their job.
* * * * * Thus hastily I have run through the labour of various kinds which was the base and condition of the fighting force.

I have left myself room for only a few last words as to that Directing Intelligence which was its brain and soul--_i.e._, the Staff work of the Army--from the brilliant and distinguished men at General Headquarters immediately surrounding the Commander-in-Chief, down to the Brigade and Battalion Staffs, the members of which actually conduct the daily and nightly operations of war from the close neighbourhood of the fighting line.
In a preceding chapter I have given a general outline of the duties falling to the Staff of the First Army in the attack on the Hindenburg line.

The range and variety of them was immense.