I seem to hear the silence in those rooms when for a moment or two young men stared at the cards and the formal words on them, and when, for just that time, all that life and death, means, came before their souls.  Was this the summons, Death itself?  Somewhere on the German side was a little steel bullet or a bit of shell waiting for the Frenchman to whom it was destined.  How long would it have to wait to find its billet?  Perhaps only a day or two—­a question of hours, slipping away now towards eternity as the clock ticked on.  From the old mother, or the young wife, from the little woman whose emotions and quarrels, greediness or self-denial, had seemed all that mattered in life, all that life meant to a young man of twenty-five or so, there came perhaps a cry, a name spoken with grief, or no word at all but the inarticulate expression of foreboding, terror, and a woman’s anguish.

“Jean!  Mon petit!  O, mon pauvre petit!” “C’est pour la patrie... mon devoir... je reviendrai bientot...  Courage, ma femme!”

Courage!  How many million times was the word spoken that night of mobilization by women who saw the sudden pallor of their men, by men who heard the cry of their women?  I heard it in the streets, spoken quite brutally sometimes, by men afraid of breaking down, and with a passionate tenderness by other men, sure of their own strength but pitiful for those whose spirit fainted at the spectre of death which stood quite close.

11

In the days that followed the Second of August I saw the whole meaning of mobilization in France—­the call of a nation to arms—­from Paris to the Eastern frontier, and the drama of it all stirs me now as I write, though many months have passed since then and I have seen more awful things on the harvest fields of death.  More awful, but not more pitiful.  For even in the sunshine of that August, before blood had been spilt and the brooding spectre of war had settled drearily over Europe, there was a poignant tragedy beneath the gallantry and the beauty of that squadron of cavalry that I had seen riding out of their barrack gates to entrain for the front.  The men and the horses were superb—­clean-limbed, finely trained, exquisite in their pride of life.  As they came out into the streets of Paris the men put on the little touch of swagger which belongs to the Frenchman when the public gaze is on him.  Even the horses tossed their heads and seemed to realize the homage of the populace.  Hundreds of women were in the crowd, waving handkerchiefs, springing forward out of their line to throw bunches of flowers to those cavaliers, who caught them and fastened them to kepi and jacket.  The officers—­young dandies of the Chasseurs—­carried great bouquets already and kissed the petals in homage to all the womanhood of France whose love they symbolized.  There were no tears in that crowd, though the wives and sweethearts of many of the young men must have stood on the kerbstone to watch them pass.