Away home in England or in the Colonies of that Kingdom live men and women who, despite reading, report and record, cannot picture the life which was lived by these men. The limit of suffering overpassed, nothing but their imperturbable endurance nerved them to the work which was theirs. For those who live so far away, the sight of these trenches even at a distance would raise a feeling of discomfort, to walk through these lines of mud would cause them no end of torture, mental and physical, to stay there for a day would be horrible, but to fight there in rain and snow and shell fire would be superlative in its ghastliness. Yet far away from these scenes, removed from all the agony war entails, it has been reported of some that they calmly sit down in their comfortable rooms and with smug pens and righteous speech protest against the little tot of rum which is issued now and again to the gallant soldiers who stand against the enemy, guarding the Empire which that enemy has set out to assail. Heaven send that this war waged against the foe without may help a little to cripple the smug intolerance that dwells within!
It was through the beaten land, on the road that runs from Amiens to Peronne that our car sped. Scarcely a soul was in sight, though now and again we could see refugees returning to the homes which once were theirs. We passed a woman and two children, the former dressed very neatly, with a mutch cap on her head and an umbrella under her arm. A mother and her loved ones, probably going back to the home they had known in days of peace.
A few miles out from Amiens we saw an old man ambling painfully along in front of us, now and again coming to a halt and looking round him, taking stock of the country through which he was passing. Hearing the car following him he turned and looked at us. He was a very old man, his beard white; he carried a stick in his hand and held a bundle under his arm. As the car came close to him it stopped and the driver inquired of the man where he was going.
"To Villars-Carbonnel," said the man, putting his stick under the arm that held the bundle, and rubbing his whiskers with the free hand.
"Your own village?" asked the driver.
"Yes, sir."
"Come inside and I'll drive you there," said the driver.
"No, thank you," said the man. "I prefer to walk. I'm near there. Villars-Carbonnel is round the corner."
The car drove on, and my thoughts dwelt with the man who was going to Villars-Carbonnel and who preferred to walk there. In viewing the countryside from the road he probably wanted to see all that had happened to the place since he was there before. Or perhaps he wanted to prolong the joyful anticipation of the homecoming. With the remembrance common to the old he was no doubt calling to mind the village which he had known all his life, the people whom he had known and loved when he dwelt there. What would the village be like now? Would it be broken down like the other villages which he had passed on the road, Villers-Bretonneux, Warfusse Abancourt, and Lamotte-en-Santerre? These were twisted out of all shape, their cafés in ruins, their streets piled with rubble, the roof beams of their many homes burned, and churches beaten almost to the ground. But no, his native village would not have suffered as these had suffered! He loved it so much that the thought of irreparable ruin hanging over his own birthplace could not certainly have entered his mind. Let him have his dreams of homecoming and he was happy.
I could picture that old man in days before the war sitting in front of his house in the summer evenings with the vines trailing round the front door and the apple blossoms blooming in his garden. In the distance the mists crept up from the Somme, the village girls leading the cattle in from the pastures came down the street; the children played on the pavement, making the night glad with their innocent prattle. Possibly the church bell was then ringing out the Angelus, calling the devotees to worship, while the old man sat there smoking his long-shanked pipe with the tobacco piled high over the bowl and the gleaming threads falling down on the breast of his coat. Then, after a while, he might go into a café, drink his glass of red wine and play a game of draughts or dominoes with his neighbour. And he knew the village, knew every man and woman there. It was his native place, loved as only the French can love the spot of earth on which they were born, and known to him as a painter knows every tint of colour on the picture which he has completed.