The German colonel's eyes went dead.
"Excellenz, I believe the supreme command reserves to itself the honour of enlightening you on its plans."
The conversation languished. The train rolled on, heavily comfortable. The staff officers talked earnestly among themselves, the word "Majestät" oft repeated. Orderlies, garbed as soldiers but obviously royal Kammerdiener, stole noiselessly in and out of the car, went frequently into the car beyond. On those occasions the distinguished neutral had a glimpse of a world-familiar figure, upturned moustaches on a tired face, a uniform of grey hung with many decorations.
The train rolled into a station, stopped. The blare of a military band started on the precise instant of its arrival. The platform was thronged with officers, bright with the red of the General Staff.
The distinguished neutral took little interest in the ceremony outside. He busied himself with collecting the small articles of his kit. Through the large windows he glimpsed the salutes of the rigidly-erect officers. Above the noise of the band he heard the repeated "Hoch! Hoch! Hoch!" of soldiers who cheered as they drilled, exactly synchronous.
He stepped on to the platform, followed by the Colonel appointed to be his conductor. "Majestät" had already departed. Officers were thronging to the exit, laughing and talking, much excited, revealing, despite the grey and red of the staff uniform, the essential childishness of the crowd-mind. "Nach Verdun!" said one of them, very close to the distinguished neutral, nudging another in the ribs. "Nach Verdun!" He repeated the just given watchword of victory as a schoolboy repeats the latest smart expression. The officers around him laughed. The crowd buzzed with high spirits.
Outside the station the roadway was choked with waiting motor-cars, lined with soldiers readjusting their helmets after tumultuous "Hochs!" Some cars—those containing the highest personages—had already departed. One after the other those remaining were filled, swerved out and sped away. The distinguished neutral and his companion found a vehicle reserved for them. The colonel led him to it with an air that suggested: "See how the smallest details are thought out!" They, too, sped away through the walls of infantry.
Behind the soldiers were a few listless French inhabitants; from the windows of that French town hung German flags, but no French faces looked out. The shops were open but their owners stood not at the doors. The neutral noted these things. The complete apathy of the population was in contrast to stories his companion had related in the train. In many of the side-streets long convoys of ammunition and ration wagons were halted to allow them passage. On one of those foremost wagons was scrawled in big chalk letters: "Nach Verdun!"
"Nach Verdun!" that was the Leitmotiv underlying all the intense military activity that filled the town and, as they shot out beyond the houses, the countryside also. Every road was choked with columns of marching infantry, with endless trains of wagons, of limbers, of ambulances. Even cavalry was in evidence, riding with tall lances and saddle-hung rifles on wretched-looking horses. "Nach Verdun!" The German colonel, though he warily gave no information, could talk of nothing else. Under that grey February sky pulsed and boomed the distant detonations of artillery. The neutral listened to it with a professional ear, was puzzled. It was persistent enough, but it was certainly not the prolonged roar of a preparatory bombardment.
The car swung into the drive of a park. A tunnel of winter-stripped trees, brown above, green streaking the bark, and then a large château drew itself across the vista. Thither the other cars had preceded them. They stood now ranked in a mass. There was a throng of officers round the great doors, the buzz awakened by the recent passage of the All-Highest. The neutral was shown to his room, the German colonel volubly regretting that exigencies of space forced him to share it.