I pitied this little man in a shoddy suit and limp straw hat who had tears in his eyes and no courage to make inquiries of station officials because he spoke no word of French.  I asked on his behalf and after jostling for half an hour in the crowd and speaking to a dozen porters who shrugged their shoulders and said, “Je n’en sais rien!” came back with the certain and doleful news that the last train had left that night for Basle.  The little Swiss was standing between his packages with his back to the wall, searching for me with anxious eyes, and when I gave him the bad news tears trickled down his face.

“Was kann ich thun?  Mein armes Weib hat Angst fur mich.”

There was nothing he could do that night, however anxious his poor wife might be, but I did not have any further conversation with him, for my bad German had already attracted the notice of the people standing near, and they were glowering at me suspiciously, as though I were a spy.

15

It was an hour later that I found a train leaving for Nancy, though even then I was assured by railway officials that there was no such train.  I had faith, however, in a young French officer who pledged his word to me that I should get to Nancy if I took my place in the carriage before which he stood.  He was going as far as Toul himself.

I could see by the crimson velvet round his kepi that he was an army doctor, and by the look of sadness in his eyes that he was not glad to leave the beautiful woman by his side who clasped his arm.  They spoke to me in English.

“This war will be horrible!” said the lady.  “It is so senseless and so unnecessary.  Why should Germany want to fight us?  There has been no quarrel between us and we wanted to live in peace.”

The young officer made a sudden gesture of disgust.

“It is a crime against humanity—­a stupid, wanton crime!”

Then he asked a question earnestly and waited for my answer with obvious anxiety: 

“Will England join in?”

I said “Yes!” with an air of absolute conviction, though on that night England had not yet given her decision.  During the last twenty-four hours I had been asked this question a score of times.  The people of Paris were getting impatient of England’s silence.  Englishmen in Paris were getting very anxious.  If England did not keep her unwritten pledge to France, it would be dangerous and a shameful thing to be an Englishman in Paris.  Some of my friends were already beginning to feel their throats with nervous fingers.

“I think so too!” said the officer, when he heard my answer.  “England will be dishonoured otherwise!”

16

The platform was now thronged with young men, many of them being officers in a variety of brand-new uniforms, but most of them still in civilian clothes as they had left their workshops or their homes to obey the mobilization orders to join their military depots.  The young medical officer who had been speaking to me withdrew himself from his wife’s arm to answer some questions addressed to him by an old colonel in his own branch of service.  The lady turned to me and spoke in a curiously intimate way, as though we were old friends.