Through all the villages along the Marne those who loitered by the silent closed houses showed holiday faces. Close outside Paris life seemed to be hardly affected. It came as a surprise, in the sunny fields, to pass by long, noisy trains of motor-lorries, bearing an infinite number of names of firms. And longer, slower trains of wagons with white and dappled grey horses were dragging in captured German pontoons, splashed with coloured soldiers. Some of these were even sitting in rope-nooses slung from the projecting beams. About them, the files of tramping infantry or fretting cavalry.
One of these motor-wagons to-day saved us a shock, and gave us a spectacle. Taking a wrong turn, which we followed, it ran down a steep road to Esbly, and, just ahead of us, shot over the edge of an exploded bridge into the river. The driver got out by jumping in time. The village was quite deserted.
In war time there are only a few through routes left open. The rest are torn up or blocked. Every exit from a town, except one or two, is barricaded with piles of trees, stone-sacks, logs, hoardings, wire, and earth. In some cases the loose structures threaten more danger to the defenders. The through routes left are broken up at intervals by walls and pits, mazes through which one winds precariously. The barricades are held by stern soldiers. But the army of Paris has admirable manners.
Probably few civilians in this war will be able to see the "Military Zone" of Paris. Yet it is a wonderful sight. Twice I ran through it to-day. Vast grounds, with horses exercising, ridden by grey soldiers. Huge parks of guns, guarded by blue soldiers. Immense enclosures of cattle. Lines of stacks; stores of forage of all sorts; acres of wagons; sprinkled with soldiers of many colours.
And all this passes, in one form or another, across those few miles of sunshine and fields, to the dry-looking brown trenches, the trampled roads and tattered-looking trees and stacks, and at last to the terrible remnants of the short human tragedy, that lie for a while among the furrows and then for ever beneath them.
In a few months these battlefields which I traversed to-day may be part, if a small part, of history. The muskets we helped to carry back, packed among a few refugee peasants, may be in museums of honour.
To most of the men who died there, and made the names of these fields famous, their names were unknown. But for those who see them still only as ruined, littered fields, it is the dead, whose names will be forgotten, who alone are present in thought.
Meanwhile the troops are progressing up the Marne. Our soldiers are in fine fettle. For the moment at least there is respite from tension. As I came back, away from the faint sound of guns, through the heart of a thunderstorm, the clouds broke in glorious wet mists of golden sunshine over Paris.
Lagny, Friday.
Official reports to-day say that the Germans have fallen back nearly forty miles from their furthest point of advance at Coulommiers. Also, that the British force has crossed the Marne between La Ferté and Chateau Thierry, and that the Prussian Guard has been rolled back upon the marshes of Gond.