we who were classed with spies—­passed all barriers and saw all the secrets of the town’s defence.  If instead of being a mild and inoffensive Englishman I had been a fierce and patriotic German, I might have brought away a mass of military information of the utmost value to General von Kluck; or, if out for blood, I might have killed some very distinguished officers before dying as a faithful son of the Fatherland.  No sentries at the door of the Hotel des Arcades, in the Place Jean-Bart, challenged three strangers of shabby and hungry look when they passed through in search of food.  Waiters scurrying about with dishes and plates did not look askance at them when they strolled into a dining-room crowded with French and British staff officers.  At the far end of the room was a great general—­drinking croute-au-pot with the simple appetite of a French poilu—­who would have been a splendid mark for anyone careless of his own life and upholding the law of frightfulness as a divine sanction for assassination.  It was “Soixante-dix Pau,” and I was glad to see that brave old man who had fought through the terrible year of 1870, and had been en retraite in Paris when, after forty-four years, France was again menaced by German armies.  Left “on the shelf” for a little while, and eating his heart out in this inactivity while his country was bleeding from the first wounds of war, he had been called back to repair the fatal blunders in Alsace.  He had shown a cool judgment and a masterly touch.  From Alsace, after a reorganization of the French plan of attack, he came to the left centre and took part in the councils of war, where General Joffre was glad of this shrewd old comrade and gallant heart.  He was given an advisory position, un-hampered by the details of a divisional command, and now it seemed to me that his presence in Dunkirk hinted at grave possibilities in this fortified town.  He had not come merely to enjoy a good luncheon at the Hotel des Arcades.

The civilian inhabitants of Dunkirk were beginning to feel alarmed.  They knew that only the last remnant of the active Belgian army stood between their great port and the enemy’s lines.  Now that Antwerp had fallen they were beginning to lose faith in their girdle of forts and in their garrison artillery.  The German guns had assumed a mythical and monstrous significance in the popular imagination.  It seemed that they could smash the strongest defences with their far-reaching thunderbolts.  There was no outward panic in the town and the citizens hid their fears under a mask of contempt for the “sacres Boches.”  But on some faces—­of people who had no fear of death except for those they loved—­it was a thin mask, which crumbled and let through terroi when across the dykes and ramparts the rumours came that the German army was smashing forward, and closer.

The old landlady of the small hotel in which I stayed had laughed very heartily with her hands upon her bulging stays when a young Belgian officer flirted in a comical way with her two pretty daughters—­a blonde and a brunette, whose real beauty and freshness and simplicity redeemed the squalor of their kitchen.