And under them, down the whole length of the hall from auditorium to auditorium, the tables are set out. Bare wooden tables, one after another, more tables than you can count.
From the door of the sleeping-hall to each auditorium, and from each auditorium down the line of the tables a gangway is roped off for the passage of the refugees.
They say there are ten thousand five hundred here to-night. Beyond the rope-line, along the inner hall, more straw has been laid down to bed the overflow from the outer hall. They come on in relays to be fed. They are marshalled first into the seats of each auditorium, where they sit like the spectators of some monstrous festival and wait for their turn at the tables.
This, the long procession of people streaming in without haste, in perfect order and submission, is heart-rending if you like. The immensity of the crowd no longer overpowers you. The barriers make it a steady procession, a credible spectacle. You can take it in. It is the thin end of the wedge in your heart. They come on so slowly that you can count them as they come. They have sorted themselves out. The fathers and the mothers are together, they lead their little children by the hand or push them gently before them. There is no anticipation in their eyes; no eagerness and no impatience in their bearing. They do not hustle each other or scramble for their places. It is their silence and submission that you cannot stand.
For you have a moment of dreadful inactivity after the setting of the tables for the premier service. You have filled your bowls with black coffee; somebody else has laid the slices of white bread on the bare tables. You have nothing to do but stand still and see them file in to the banquet. On the banners and standards from the roof and balustrades the Lion of Flanders ramps over their heads. And somewhere in the back of your brain a song sings itself to a tune that something in your brain wakes up:
Ils ne vont pas dompter
Le vieux lion de Flandres,
Tant que le lion a des dents,
Tant que le lion peut griffer.
It is the song the Belgian soldiers sang as they marched to battle in the first week of August. It is only the end of September now.
And somebody standing beside you says: "C'est triste, n'est-ce pas?"
You cannot look any more.
At the canteen the men are pouring out coffee from enormous enamelled jugs into the small jugs that the waitresses bring. This wastes your time and cools the coffee. So you take a big jug from the men. It seems to you no heavier than an ordinary teapot. And you run with it. To carry the largest possible jug at the swiftest possible pace is your only chance of keeping sane. (It isn't till it is all over that you hear the whisper of "Anglaise!" and realize how very far from sane you must have looked running round with your enormous jug.) You can fill up the coffee bowls again—the little bowls full, the big bowls only half full; there is more than enough coffee to go round. But there is no milk except for the babies. And when they ask you for more bread there is not enough to go twice round. The ration is now two slices of dry bread and a bowl of black coffee three times a day. Till yesterday there was an allowance of meat for soup at the mid-day meal; to-day the army has commandeered all the meat.