He retorted with:
"My dear fellow, they're getting two days ahead of the estimates."
He had been to the station. He had seen any amount of trains passing crammed with troops and war material...! An inconceivable number of big guns, and ammunition waggons, and gun carriages! A store of unsuspected riches!
Our staff? Was admirable. Joffre, the great strategist, who left nothing to chance. Pau, the soldier whom the Germans feared more than any one, De Castelnau! Since he had made it his career despite his opinions!
The Government? Perfection. Viviani, the right man in the right place; the strong and many-sided genius that was needed. How fine,—and what a clever move—his letter to Madame Jaurès had been! The results of it were this solidity, and absolute unanimity; the rising en masse of the peaceful operatives, the internationalists of yesterday, claiming for their great country the right to live and be respected.
Guillaumin knew the text of the different official declarations and proclamations by heart; he recited scraps of them to me.
"Glorious! What!"
It was not an assumed excitement. I sounded him. He really was delighted to be going. It was the ingenuous wish for the unexpected and for adventure in one who led the most dreary of lives as a civilian. And the need to expend himself in a cause he felt was just. He did not need much urging to bring out such big words as Duty and Patriotism!!
His fervour both lowered him and raised him in my estimation. On one side I was inclined to place him in the class of credulous boobies, like the young fool of a lawyer's clerk I had met in the railway carriage. At the same time he gave me an example of moral warmth and vigour preferable to my frivolity.