A young Flemish mother cuddled close to a small boy with flaxen hair, whose blue eyes stared solemnly in front of him with an old man’s gravity of vision.  She touched the child’s hair with her lips, pressed him closer, seemed eager to feel his living form, as though nothing mattered now that she had him safe.

On the opposite seat were two Belgian officers—­an elderly man with a white moustache and grizzled eyebrows under his high kepi and a young man in a tasselled forage cap, like a boy-student.  They both sat in a limp, dejected way.  There was defeat and despair in their attitude It was only when the younger man shifted his right leg with a sudden grimace of pain that I saw he was wounded.

Here in these two carriages through which I could glimpse were a few souls holding in their memory all the sorrow and suffering of poor, stricken Belgium.  Upon this long train were a thousand other men and women in the same plight and with the same grief.

Next to me in the corridor was a young man with a pale beard and moustache and fine delicate features.  He had an air of distinction, and his clothes suggested a man of some wealth and standing.  I spoke to him, a few commonplace sentences, and found, as I had guessed, that he was a Belgian refugee.

“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 Liege 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.