There are phrases like these which could only have been said by the people who say them; they are like windows suddenly opening down cycles of racial history and difference.  At a Regent Street moving-picture show a few evenings ago two young Frenchwomen sat behind us, girls driven off the Paris boulevards by the same impartial force which has driven grubbing peasant women from the Belgian beet-fields.  One spoke a little English, and as the pictures changed she translated for her companion.

There were pictures of the silk industry in Japan—­moths emerging from cocoons, the breeding process, the hatching of the eggs, the life history of these anonymous little specks magnified until for the moment they almost had a sort of personality.  And one murmured: 

“Comme c’est drole, la nature!”

Sunday.

It was dusk when we reached Boulogne last night—­frosty dusk, with the distant moan of a fog-horn, and under the mist hilly streets busy with soldiers and bright with lights.  It made one think of a college town at home on the eve of the great game, so keen and happy seemed all these fit young men—­officers swinging by with their walking-sticks, soldiers spinning yarns in smoky cafes—­for the great game of war.

The hotels were full of wounded or officers—­to Boulogne comes the steady procession of British transports—­but an amiable porter led me to a little side street and a place kept by a retired English merchant-marine officer who had married a Frenchwoman.  Paintings, such as sailor-artists make, of the ships he had served in were on the walls, a photograph of himself and his mates taken in the sunshine of some tropical port; and with its cheerful hot stove, the place combined the air of a French cafe with the cosiness of an English inn.

Very comfortable, indeed, I leaned over one of the tables that ran along the wall, while two British soldiers alongside gossiped and sipped their beer, and ran over the columns of La Boulonnaise.  Here, too, war seemed a jolly man’s game, and I came to “Military Court Sitting at Boulogne,” and beneath it the following: 

Seventh, eighth, and ninth cases.  Thefts by German prisoners of war.  The accused are Antoine Michels, twenty-five years, native of Treves, Twenty-seventh German Chasseurs, made prisoner at Lens.  Henriede Falk, twenty-seven years, native of Landenheissen (Grand Duchy of Hesse), Fourth Regiment Dragoons, made prisoner at Lille.  Max Benninghoven, twenty-two years, Seventh German Chasseurs, made prisoner at Bailleul.

“The three had in their possession at the moment of their capture:  Michels, two pairs of earrings, a steel watch, two medals representing the town of Arras, and a cigar-holder; Falk, a woman’s watch and chain in addition to his own; Benninghoven, a pocketbook, a pack of cards, and money that did not belong to him.

“All were subjected to a severe examination and condemned:  Michels, to five years in prison and a fine of five hundred francs; Falk, to twenty years at forced labor...”