V
The next morning Walter walked over to Alston for more news. He brought back more papers, but nothing definite besides. The people in the town were talking about war, he said, telegrams were put up outside the Town Hall. Two days later he went over to Alston again. The exact moments at which it became credible, probable, inevitable, that England would fight too, I cannot remember at all.
The postman, who brought the post on Monday, stopped me at the gate with news of the Advance into Belgium.
‘Two million Germans on the march,’ he said. He smiled a twisted sort of smile, and added, ‘And I’m in the front line.’
It took me several moments to realize that he meant that he was a reservist.
I never saw him again.
When the British Declaration of War came, it made hardly a sensation. We had known it must come for so many hours, and hours during these days were like months.