"Where are you going?" I asked.
He smiled at me and shrugged his shoulders slightly.
"Anywhere. What does it matter? I have lost everything. One place is as good as another for a ruined man."
He did not speak emotionally. There was no thrill of despair in his voice. It was as though he were telling me that he had lost his watch.
"That is my mother over there," he said presently, glancing towards
the old lady with the silver hair. "Our house has been burnt by the
Germans and all our property was destroyed. We have nothing left.
May I have a light for this cigarette?"
One young soldier explained the reasons for the Belgian debacle.
They seemed convincing:
"I fought all the way from Liège to Antwerp. But it was always the same. When we killed one German, five appeared in his place. When we killed a hundred, a thousand followed. It was all no use. We had to retreat and retreat. That is demoralizing."
"England is very kind to the refugees," said another man. "We shall never forget these things."
The train stopped at wayside stations. Sometimes we got down to stamp our feet. Always there were crowds of Belgian refugees on the platforms—shadow figures in the darkness or silhouetted in the light of the station lamps. They were encamped there with their bundles and their babies.
On the railway lines were many trains, shunted into sidings. They belonged to the Belgian State Railways, and had been brought over the frontier away from German hands—hundreds of them. In their carriages little families of refugees had made their homes. They are still living in them, hanging their washing from the windows, cooking their meals in these narrow rooms. They have settled down as though the rest of their lives is to be spent in a siding. We heard their voices, speaking Flemish, as our train passed on. One woman was singing her child to sleep with a sweet old lullaby. In my train there was singing also. A party of four young Frenchmen came in, forcing their way hilariously into a corridor which seemed packed to the last inch of space. I learnt the words of the refrain which they sang at every station: