the malodorous vapours which exhaled from him.  In a stealthy way they crept down the length of the corridor, so that other people, far away, flung open windows and thrust out heads, in spite of the night air with a bite of frost in it.  I dozed uneasily with horrid dreams as I sat on three inches of hard box, with my head jogging sideways.  Always I was conscious of the evil smell about me, but when the peasant was still I was able to suffer’ it, because of sheer weariness, which deadened my senses.  It was when he moved, disturbing invisible layers of air, that I awakened horribly.

10

For the nice people of the world whom fate had pampered, there was a cruelty in this mode of travel.  Hunger, with its sharp tooth, assailed some of them for the first time.  We stopped at wayside stations—­still more often between the stations—­but American millionaires and English aristocrats were stupefied to find that not all their money could buy a sandwich.  Most of the buffets had been cleaned out by the army passing to the front.  Thirst, intolerable and choking, was a greater pain in those hot dog-days and in those tedious interminable journeys.

Yet it is only fair to say that on the whole those tourists chased across the Continent by the advancing spectre of war, behaved with pluck and patience.  Some of them had suffered grievous loss.  From Bale and Geneva to Paris and Boulogne the railways were littered with their abandoned luggage, too bulky to be loaded into overcrowded trains.  On the roads of France were broken-down motor-cars which had cost large sums of money in New York and London.  But because war’s stupendous evil makes all other things seem trivial, and the gifts of liberty and life are more precious than wealth or luxury, so these rich folk in misfortune fraternized cheerfully in the discussion of their strange adventures and shared the last drop of hot tea in a Thermos flask with the generous instincts of shipwrecked people dividing their rations on a desert isle.

11

This flight of the pleasure-seekers was the first revelation of the way in which war would hurt the non-combatant and sacrifice his business or his comfort to its supreme purpose.  Fame was merely foolishness when caught in the trap of martial law.  I saw a man of European reputation flourish his card before railway officials, to be thrust back by the butt end of a rifle, No money could buy a seat in a railway carriage already crowded to suffocation.  No threat to write a letter to the Times would avail an old-fashioned Englishman when his train was shunted for hours on to a side line to make way for troop trains, passing, passing, through the day and night.  Nations were at war, and whatever stood in the way of the war’s machine would be trampled underfoot or thrust on one side with brutal indifference.  Their fame did not matter nor their struggles to escape from a closing net.  Neither the beauty of women nor the weakness of children nor the importance of the world’s great somebodies mattered a jot.  Nothing mattered except fighting-men, and guns, and food for guns and men.