A neurotic type—a poor weed of life who had been reared in the dark lairs of civilization. Yet I had no contempt for him as he gibbered with self-pity. The tragedy of the future of civilization was in the soul of that pallid, sharp-featured, ill-nourished man who had lived in misery within the glitter of a rich city and who was now being taken to his death—I feel sure he died in the trenches even though no bullet may have reached him—at the command of great powers who knew nothing of this poor ant. What did his individual life matter? … I stared into the soul of a soldier of France and wondered at the things I saw in it—at the spiritual faith which made a patriot of that apache.
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There was a change of company in the carriage, the democrats being turned into a third-class carriage to make way for half a dozen officers of various grades and branches. I had new types to study and was surprised by the calmness and quietude of these men—mostly of middle age—who had just left their homes for active service. They showed no signs of excitement but chatted about the prospects of the war as though it were an abstract problem. The attitude of England was questioned and again I was called upon to speak as the representative of my country and to assure Frenchmen of our friendship and co-operation. They seemed satisfied with my statements and expressed their belief that the British Fleet would make short work of the enemy at sea.
One of the officers took no part in the conversation. He was a handsome man of about forty years of age, in the uniform of an infantry regiment, and he sat in the corner of the carriage, stroking his brown moustache in a thoughtful way. He had a fine gravity of face and once or twice when his eyes turned my way I saw an immense sadness in them.
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As our train passed through France on its way to Nancy, we heard and saw the tumult of a nation arming itself for war and pouring down to its frontiers to meet the enemy. All through the night, as we passed through towns and villages and under railway bridges, the song of the Marseillaise rose up to the carriage windows and then wailed away like a sad plaint as our engine shrieked and raced on. At the sound of the national hymn one of the officers in my carriage always opened his eyes and lifted his head, which had been drooping forward on his chest, and listened with a look of puzzled surprise, as though he could not realize even yet that France was at war and that he was on his way to the front. But the other officers slept; and the silent man, whose quiet dignity and sadness had impressed me, smiled a little in his sleep now and then and murmured a word or two, among which I seemed to hear a woman's name.
In the dawn and pallid sunlight of the morning I saw the soldiers of France assembling. They came across the bridges with glinting rifles, and the blue coats and red trousers of the infantry made them look in the distance like tin soldiers from a children's playbox. But there were battalions of them close to the railway lines, waiting at level crossings, and with stacked arms on the platforms, so that I could look into their eyes and watch their faces. They were fine young men, with a certain hardness and keenness of profile which promised well for France. There was no shouting among them, no patriotic demonstrations, no excitability. They stood waiting for their trains in a quiet, patient way, chatting among themselves, smiling, smoking cigarettes, like soldiers on their way to sham fights in the ordinary summer manoeuvres. The town and village folk, who crowded about them and leaned over the gates at the level crossings to watch our train, were more demonstrative. They waved hands to us and cried out "Bonne chance!" and the boys and girls chanted the Marseillaise again in shrill voices. At every station where we halted, and we never let one of them go by without a stop, some of the girls came along the platform with baskets of fruit, of which they made free gifts to our trainload of men. Sometimes they took payment in kisses, quite simply and without any bashfulness, lifting their faces to the lips of bronzed young men who thrust their képis back and leaned out of the carriage windows.
"Come back safe and sound, my little one," said a girl. "Fight well for
France!"
"I do not hope to come back," said a soldier, "but I shall die fighting."
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