The Soul of the War

rote one of my confrères, and he added this phrase: "There is no sign of panic." He was right if by panic one meant a noisy fear, of crowds rushing wildly about

ious as a fell disease so that men ordinarily brave felt gripped with a sudden chill at the heart, a

kness in the soul of Paris. But if there is any truth in my pen it must describe that exodus by one and a half millions of people who, under the impulse of a great fear-what else was it?-f

rds the way was easier, though from that direction also regiments of French soldiers were being rushed up to the danger zone. The railway officials under the pressure of this tremendous strain, did their best to hurl out the population of Paris, somehow and anyhow. For military reasons the need was urgent, The less mouths to feed the better in a besieged city. So when all the passenger trains had been used, cattle trucks were put together and into them, thanking God, tumbl

sses and types of life in Paris were mixed up in this retreat, and among them were men I knew, so that I needed no guesswork for their stories. For weeks some of them had been working under nervous pressure, keeping "a stiff upper lip" as it is called to all rumours of impending tragedy. But the contagion of fear had caught them in a secret way, and suddenly their nerves had snapped, and they too had abandoned courage and ideals of duty, slinking, as though afraid of daylight, to stations more closely sieged than Pa

n every kind of vehicle-taxi-cabs for which rich people had paid fabulous prices, motor-cars which had escaped the military requisition, farmers' carts laden with several families and piles of

heir shoulders, families stepping out together. They were of all classes, rank and fortune being annihilated by this common tragedy. Elegant women, whose beauty is known in the Paris salons, whose frivolity p

de, and poor old people who could go no further but sat down on the banks below the hedg

g with lines of pain about their lips and eyes. Many of the taxi-cabs, bought at great prices, and ma

een tilted up, with all their household goods spilt into the roadway, and the children had been carried fur

ed with forts on that side, from those of Ecouen and Montmorency by the distant ramparts of Chelles and Champigny to those of Sucy and Villeneuve-the outer lines of a triple cordon. But on the western side there was next to nothing, and it was a sign to me of the utter unreadiness of France that now at the eleventh hour when I passe

ing their petals on the garden paths. The creeper was crimsoning on the walls and the grass plots were like velvet carpeting, so soft and deeply green. But there were signs of disorder, of some hurried transmigration. Packing-cases littered the trim lawns and cardboard boxes had been flung about. In one small bower I saw a child's perambulator, where two wax dolls sat staring up at the abandoned house. Their fa

ands sont

garden on the Seine, and the open book, with the su

is nose, he held out his long rod with a steady hand and waited for a bite, in an attitude of supreme indifference to Germans, guns, hatred, tears and all the miserable stupidities of people who do not fish. He was at peace with the world on this day of

h a peasant girl stood with her hands on her hips staring at her fowls, which were struggling and clucking for the grain she had flung down to them. There was a

re walking through silent halls. Could this be Paris-this city of shuttered shops and barred windows and deserted avenues? There were no treasures displayed in the Ru

familiar words, "Want a guide, sir?" "Lovely ladies, sir!" The love

ing, and we were faint f

seemed to come from the virgin forests of the Madeira in which he

ed aimlessly about the empty streets, and with an old cocher who looked

nightmare creatures in a bad dream after an absinthe orgy.

es… écoutez do

whip with an aw

houted to his

y heard the outrageous noise of our horse's hoofs thundering into the awful silence of their courtyard. The manager, and the assistant manager, an

Everybody has fled! We

married, and where Marie Antoinette saw old ghost faces-the dead faces of laughing girls-when she passed on her way to th

rustle to the ground. Not a child scampered under the trees or chased a comrade round the Petit Guignol. No women with twinkling needles sat on the stone seats. No black-haired student fondled the hand of a pretty couturière. No honest bourgeois with a fat stoma

by some spiritual emotion. It was when we passed the Palais des Beaux-Arts that he stood

who knows God only as the spirit is revealed on lonely waters and above upris

ars of light flashed from the brazen-winged horses above Alexander's bridge, and the dome of the Invalides was a golden crown above a snow-white palace. The Seine poured in a burnished stream beneath all the bridges and far away beyond the houses and the island trees, and all the picture of Paris etched by a master-hand through long centuries of time the towers of Notre Dame were faintly pencilled in the blue screen of sky. Oh, fair dream-city, in w