14
I went down to the East frontier on the first day of mobilization. It was in the evening when I went to take the train from the Gare de l'Est. The station was filled with a seething crowd of civilians and soldiers, struggling to get to the booking-offices, vainly seeking information as to the times of departure to distant towns of France. The railway officials were bewildered and could give no certain information. The line was under military control. Many trains had been suppressed and the others had no fixed time-table. I could only guess at the purpose animating the individuals in these crowds. Many of them, perhaps, were provincials, caught in Paris by the declaration of war and desperately anxious to get back to their homes before the lines were utterly choked by troop trains. Others belonged to neutral countries and were trying to escape across the frontier before the gates were closed. One of the "neutrals" spoke to me—in German, which was a dangerous tongue in Paris. He was a Swiss who had come to Paris on business for a few days, leaving his wife in a village near Basle. It was of his wife that he kept talking.
"Ach, mein armes Weib! Sie hat Angst fur mich."
I pitied this little man in a shoddy suit and limp straw hat who had tears in his eyes and no courage to make inquiries of station officials because he spoke no word of French. I asked on his behalf and after jostling for half an hour in the crowd and speaking to a dozen porters who shrugged their shoulders and said, "Je n'en sais rien!" came back with the certain and doleful news that the last train had left that night for Basle. The little Swiss was standing between his packages with his back to the wall, searching for me with anxious eyes, and when I gave him the bad news tears trickled down his face.
"Was kann ich thun? Mein armes Weib hat Angst fur mich."
There was nothing he could do that night, however anxious his poor wife might be, but I did not have any further conversation with him, for my bad German had already attracted the notice of the people standing near, and they were glowering at me suspiciously, as though I were a spy.
15
It was an hour later that I found a train leaving for Nancy, though even then I was assured by railway officials that there was no such train. I had faith, however, in a young French officer who pledged his word to me that I should get to Nancy if I took my place in the carriage before which he stood. He was going as far as Toul himself.
I could see by the crimson velvet round his kèpi that he was an army doctor, and by the look of sadness in his eyes that he was not glad to leave the beautiful woman by his side who clasped his arm. They spoke to me in English.
"This war will be horrible!" said the lady. "It is so senseless and so unnecessary. Why should Germany want to fight us? There has been no quarrel between us and we wanted to live in peace."
The young officer made a sudden gesture of disgust.
"It is a crime against humanity—a stupid, wanton crime!"
Then he asked a question earnestly and waited for my answer with obvious anxiety:
"Will England join in?"
I said "Yes!" with an air of absolute conviction, though on that night England had not yet given her decision. During the last twenty-four hours I had been asked this question a score of times. The people of Paris were getting impatient of England's silence. Englishmen in Paris were getting very anxious. If England did not keep her unwritten pledge to France, it would be dangerous and a shameful thing to be an Englishman in Paris. Some of my friends were already beginning to feel their throats with nervous fingers.
"I think so too!" said the officer, when he heard my answer. "England will be dishonoured otherwise!"
16
The platform was now thronged with young men, many of them being officers in a variety of brand-new uniforms, but most of them still in civilian clothes as they had left their workshops or their homes to obey the mobilization orders to join their military depots. The young medical officer who had been speaking to me withdrew himself from his wife's arm to answer some questions addressed to him by an old colonel in his own branch of service. The lady turned to me and spoke in a curiously intimate way, as though we were old friends.
"Have you begun to realize what it means? I feel that I ought to weep because my husband is leaving me. We have two little children. But there are no tears higher than my heart. It seems as though he were just going away for a week-end—and yet he may never come back to us. Perhaps to-morrow I shall weep."
She did not weep even when the train was signalled to start and when the man put his arms about her and held her in a long embrace, whispering down to her. Nor did I see any tears in other women's eyes as they waved farewell. It was only the pallor of their faces which showed some hidden agony.
17
Before the train started the carriage in which I had taken my seat was crowded with young men who, excepting one cavalry officer in the corner, seemed to belong to the poorest classes of Paris. In the corner opposite the dragoon was a boy of eighteen or so in the working clothes of a terrassier or labourer. No one had come to see him off to the war, and he was stupefied with drink. Several times he staggered up and vomited out of the window with an awful violence of nausea, and then fell back with his head lolling sideways on the cushions of the first-class carriage. None of the other men—except the cavalry officer, who drew in his legs slightly—took the slightest interest in this poor wretch—a handsome lad with square-cut features and fair tousled hair, who had tried to get courage out of absinthe before leaving for the war.
18
In the corner opposite my own seat was a thin pallid young man, also a little drunk, but with an excited brain in which a multitude of strange and tragic thoughts chased each other. He recognized me as an Englishman at once, and with a shout of "Camarade!" shook hands with me not once but scores of times during the first part of our journey.
He entered upon a monologue that seemed interminable, his voice rising into a shrill excitement and then sinking into a hoarse whisper. He belonged to the "apache" type, and had come out of one of those foul lairs which lie hidden behind the white beauty of Paris—yet he spoke with a terrible eloquence which kept me fascinated. I remember some of his words, though I cannot give them his white heat of passion, nor the infinite pathos of his self-pity.
"I have left a wife behind, the woman who loves me and sees something more in me than vileness. Shall I tell you how I left her, Monsieur? Dying—in a hospital at Charenton. I shall never see her again. I shall never again take her thin white face in my dirty hands and say, 'You and I have tasted the goodness of life, my little one, while we have starved together!' For life is good, Monsieur, but in a little while I shall be dead in one place and my woman in another. That is certain. I left a child behind me—a little girl. What will happen to her when I am killed? I left her with the concierge, who promised to take care of her—not for money, you understand, because I had none to give. My little girl will never see me again, and I shall never see her grow into a woman. Because I am going to be killed. Perhaps in a day or two there will be no more life for me. This hand of mine—you see I can grasp things with it, move it this way and that, shake hands with you—camarade!—salute the spirit of France with it—comme ça! But tomorrow or the next day it will be quite still. A dead thing—like my dead body. It is queer. Here I sit talking to you alive. But to-morrow or the next day my corpse will lie out on the battlefield, like a bit of earth. I can see that corpse of mine, with its white face and staring eyes. Ugh! it is a dirty sight—a man's corpse. Here in