The Grass Road
You can keep on for a short distance beyond the town, on the other side of it. The great road leads on between its poplar trees, white and straight. Here it has been less wounded because the hills shelter it. The trees have not been hurt here; they lift their grey-green plumes, light and proud as ever, above the road.
I remember to ask: Is there much passing along the road, that terrible grey passing of war things? Do you see many blue troops along the road? They say: Oh, yes, of course, as far as the old octroi.
What is it like now at the octroi under the edge of the hill?
Just beyond the octroi there is a barbed-wire entanglement across the road. No one can go farther. There are soldiers in the yellow little house of the octroi. The sentinel comes out.
They tell me that the road beyond the barbed-wire entanglement leads straight on, between the poplar trees, as far as any one can see, deep grown in grass. Nearly two years deep in grass. It is nearly two years since any one, yes, any one, has gone a step along that road.
They tell me a thing the sentinel said, that is a hideous thing. I do not know why I want to tell it. I know just how he said it, with bitterness and irony, but as if it were a thing of small matter that would be soon arranged for.
He said, "Just along there, about half-way as far as we can see, begins Germany."