At those moments, in the sunshine, even the sting of parting was forgotten in the enthusiasm and pride which rose up to those splendid ranks of cavalry who were on their way to fight foi France and to uphold the story of their old traditions.  I could see no tears then but my own, for I confess that suddenly to my eyes there came a mist of tears and I was seized with an emotion that made me shudder icily in the glare of the day.  For beyond the pageantry of the cavalcade I saw the fields of war, with many of those men and horses lying mangled under the hot sun of August.  I smelt the stench of blood, for I had been in the muck and misery of war before and had seen the death carts coming back from the battlefield and the convoys of wounded crawling down the rutty roads—­from Adrianople—­with men, who had been strong and fine, now shattered, twisted and made hideous by pain.  The flowers carried by those cavalry officers seemed to me like funeral wreaths upon men who were doomed to die, and the women who sprang out of the crowds with posies for their men were offering the garlands of death.

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In the streets of Paris in those first days of the war I saw many scenes of farewell.  All day long one saw them, so that at last one watched them without emotion, because the pathos of them became monotonous.  It was curious how men said good-bye, often, to their wives and children and comrades at a street corner, or in the middle of the boulevards.  A hundred times or more I saw one of these conscript soldiers who had put on his uniform again after years of civilian life, turn suddenly to the woman trudging by his side or to a group of people standing round him and say:  “Alors, il faut dire Adieu et Au revoir!” One might imagine that he was going on a week-end visit and would be back again in Paris on Monday next.  It was only by the long-drawn kiss upon the lips of the woman who raised a dead white face to him and by the abruptness with which the man broke away and walked off hurriedly until he was lost in the passing crowds that one might know that this was as likely as not the last parting between a man and a woman who had known love together and that each of them had seen the vision of death which would divide them on this side of the grave.  The stoicism of the Frenchwomen was wonderful.  They made no moan or plaint.  They gave their men to “La Patrie” with the resignation of religious women who offer their hearts to God.  Some spiritual fervour, which in France permeates the sentiment of patriotism, giving a beauty to that tradition of nationality which, without such a spirit, is the low and ignorant hatred of other peoples, strengthened and uplifted them.

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