I imagine this letter will turn into a sort of diary, as it is difficult to say when I shall be able to get any mail matter off.  All our communications with the outside world—­except by road—­were cut this morning by order of the War Bureau.  Our railroad is the road to all the eastern frontiers—­the trains to Belgium as well as to Metz and Strasbourg pass within sight of my garden.  If you don’t know what that means—­just look on a map and you will realize that the army that advances, whether by road or by train, will pass by me.

During the mobilization, which will take weeks,—­not only is France not ready, all the world knows that her fortified towns are mostly only fortified on the map,—­civilians, the mails, and such things must make way for soldiers and war materials.  I shall continue to write.  It will make me feel in touch still; it will be something to do:  besides, any time some one may go up to town by road and I thus have a chance to send it.

VII

August 3, 1914.

Well—­war is declared.

I passed a rather restless night.  I fancy every one in France did.  All night I heard a murmur of voices, such an unusual thing here.  It simply meant that the town was awake and, the night being warm, every one was out of doors.

All day to-day aeroplanes have been flying between Paris and the frontier.  Everything that flies seems to go right over my roof.  Early this morning I saw two machines meet, right over my garden, circle about each other as if signaling, and fly off together.  I could not help feeling as if one chapter of Wells’s “War in the Air” had come to pass.  It did make me realize how rapidly the aeroplane had developed into a real weapon of war.  I remember so well, no longer ago than Exposition year,—­that was 1900,—­that I was standing, one day, in the old Galerie des Machines, with a young engineer from Boston.  Over our heads was a huge model of a flying machine.  It had never flown, but it was the nearest thing to success that had been accomplished—­and it expected to fly some time.  So did Darius Green, and people were still skeptical.  As he looked up at it, the engineer said:  “Hang it all, that dashed old thing will fly one day, but I shall probably not live to see it.”

He was only thirty at that time, and it was such a few years after that it did fly, and no time at all, once it rose in the air to stay there, before it crossed the Channel.  It is wonderful to think that after centuries of effort the thing flew in my time—­and that I am sitting in my garden to-day, watching it sail overhead, like a bird, looking so steady and so sure.  I can see them for miles as they approach and for miles after they pass.  Often they disappear from view, not because they have passed a horizon line, but simply because they have passed out of the range of my vision-? becoming smaller and smaller, until they seem no bigger than a tiny bird, so small that if I take my eyes off the speck in the sky I cannot find it again.  It is awe-compelling to remember how these cars in the air change all military tactics.  It will be almost impossible to make any big movement that may not be discovered by the opponent.