That journey of ours would have taken eight or ten hours in peace time. We spent thirty hours over it, and that was considered good going. The theory of circulating trains turned out to be entirely wrong. We changed at wayside stations, standing for hours on desolate platforms. We pursued trains into remote sidings in the middle of the night, tripping over wires and stumbling among sleepers. We ate things of an unusual kind at odd hours. We slept by snatches. I shaved and washed in a tin mug full of water drawn from the side of an engine. M., indomitably cheerful, secured buns and apples at 6 o’clock in the morning. He paid for the buns. I believe he looted the apples out of a truck in a siding near our carriage.
We found ourselves at noon in a large town with four hours’ leisure before us. An R.T.O.—we reported to every R.T.O. we could find—recommended an excellent restaurant. M. shaved and washed elaborately in a small basin which the thoughtful proprietor had placed in the passage outside the dining-room door. We had a huge meal and made friends with a French officer who was attached to some of our troops as interpreter. He had spent two years before the war at Cambridge. There perhaps, more probably elsewhere, he had been taught that Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb are the most influential people in England, and that Mr. H. G. Wells, though not from a purely literary point of view a great writer, is the most profound philosopher in the world. He deeply lamented the fact that compulsory military service had just been introduced into England.
“The last fortress of individual liberty,” he said, “has fallen. The world is now militarised.”
I reminded him that Ireland still remained a free country; but he did not seem consoled. He took the view that the Irish, though not compelled to fight, are an oppressed people.
I found that interpreter an interesting man, though he would not talk about the early fighting at Charleroi where he had been wounded. I should much rather have heard about that. Lyrical eulogies of Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb seemed out of place. I had been “militarised” for no more than four days. But I already felt as if the world in which clever people suppose themselves to think were a half-forgotten dream. The only reality for me was that other world in which men, who do not profess to be clever, suppose themselves to be doing things. On the whole the soldiers, though they fuss a good deal, seem to have a better record of actual accomplishment than the thinkers.
The last stage of our journey—an affair of some six hours—was unexciting. I think I should have slept through the whole of it if it had not been for a major, plainly a “dug-out” who had not gone soldiering for many years. He had landed from England a day before we did, and had, by his own account, been tossed about northern France like a shuttlecock, the different R.T.O.’s he dealt with being the battledores. He had been put into trains going the wrong way, dragged out of them and put into others which did not stop at his particular station. He was hungry, which he disliked; dirty, which he disliked still more; and was beginning to lose hope of ever reaching his destination. M. slept; but then M. was at the far end of the compartment. The other three people with us were French, and the major could not speak their language. It was to me that he expressed his feelings, so I could not sleep.
We reached H. at 10 p.m., almost as fagged and quite as dirty as that major. I had already learned something. I was determined not to report myself to any one until I had washed, slept, and eaten. It was snowing heavily when we arrived. With the help of a military policeman whom we met we found an hotel. He told us that it was a first-rate place; but he was no judge of hotels. It was very far from being good. We had, however, every reason to be thankful to that policeman. We secured two beds. While we were smoking our final pipes, two young officers turned up. They had been round all the good hotels in the town and failed to find accommodation. They failed again in our hotel. We had engaged the last two beds. They went off sadly to sleep on the platform in the railway station. If our policeman had known more about hotels and sent us to a good one, it might very well have been our fate to sleep on the platform.
Next morning, M., who is extraordinarily persevering, secured a bath. It is a great advantage when in France not to know any French. M. is wholly unaffected when the proprietor of an hotel, the proprietor’s wife, the head waiter, and several housemaids assure him with one voice that a bath is tout à fait impossible. He merely smiles and says: “Very well then, bring it along or show me where it is.” In the end he gets it, and, fortunate in his companionship, so do I.