21

The fields were swept with the golden light of the sun, and the heavy foliage of the trees sang through every note of green.  The white roads of France stretched away straight between the fields and the hills, with endless lines of poplars as their sentinels, and in clouds of greyish dust rising like smoke the regiments marched with a steady tramp.  Gun carriages moved slowly down the roads in a glare of sun which sparkled upon the steel tubes of the field artillery and made a silver bar of every wheel-spoke.  I heard the creak of the wheels and the rattle of the limber and the shouts of the drivers to their teams; and I thrilled a little every time we passed one of these batteries because I knew that in a day or two these machines, which were being carried along the highways of France, would be wreathed with smoke denser than the dust about them now, while they vomited forth shells at the unseen enemy whose guns would answer with the roar of death.

Guns and men, horses and wagons, interminable convoys of munitions, great armies on the march, trainloads of soldiers on all the branch lines, soldiers bivouacked in the roadways and in market places, long processions of young civilians carrying bundles to military depots where they would change their clothes and all their way of life—­these pictures of preparation for war flashed through the carriage windows into my brain, mile after mile, through the country of France, until sometimes I closed my eyes to shut out the glare and glitter of this kaleidoscope, the blood-red colour of all those French trousers tramping through the dust, the lurid blue of all those soldiers’ overcoats, the sparkle of all those gun-wheels.  What does it all mean, this surging tide of armed men?  What would it mean in a day or two, when another tide of men had swept up against it, with a roar of conflict, striving to overwhelm this France and to swamp over its barriers in waves of blood?  How senseless it seemed that those mild-eyed fellows outside my carriage windows, chatting with the girls while we waited for the signals to fall, should be on their way to kill other mild-eyed men, who perhaps away in Germany were kissing other girls, for gifts of fruit and flowers.

22

It was at this station near Toul that I heard the first words of hatred.  They were in a conversation between two French soldiers who had come with us from Paris.  They had heard that some Germans had already been taken prisoners across the frontier, and they were angry that the men were still alive.

“Prisoners?  Pah!  Name of a dog!  I will tell you what I would do with German prisoners!”

It was nothing nice that that man wanted to do with German prisoners.  He indulged in long and elaborate details as to the way in which he would wreath their bowels about his bayonet and tear out their organs with his knife.  The other man had more imagination.  He devised more ingenious modes of torture so that the Germans should not die too soon.