On the railway sidings near Calais there was one sight that revealed the defeat of a nation more even than these crowds of refugees.  Hundreds of Belgian engines had been rushed over the frontier to France to escape from being used in the enemy’s service.  These derelict things stood there in long rows with a dismal look of lifelessness and abandonment, and as I looked at them I knew that though the remnants of the Belgian army might be fighting in its last ditch and holding out at Antwerp against the siege guns of the Germans, there could be no hope of prolonged resistance against overwhelming armies.  These engines, which should have been used for Belgian transport, for men and food and guns, were out of action, and dead symbols of a nation’s ruin.

22

For the first time I saw Belgian soldiers in France, and although they were in small number compared with the great army of retreat which, after the fall of Antwerp, I saw marching into Dunkirk, their weariness and listlessness told a tale of woe.  At first sight there was something comical in the aspect of these top-hatted soldiers.  They reminded me of battalions of London cabbies who had ravaged the dustbins for discarded “toppers.”  Their double-breasted coats had just the cut of those of the ancient jehus who used to sit aloft on decrepit “growlers.”  Other bodies of Belgian soldiers wore ludicrous little kepis with immense eye-shades, mostly broken or hanging limp in a dejected way.  In times of peace I should have laughed at the look of them.  But now there was nothing humorous about these haggard, dirty men from Ghent who had borne the first shock of the German attack.  They seemed stupefied for lack of sleep, or dazed after the noise of battle.  I asked some of them where they were going, but they shook their heads and answered gloomily: 

“We don’t know.  We know nothing, except that our Belgium is destroyed.  What is the news?”

23

There was no news—­beyond what one could glean from the incoherent tales of Belgian refugees.  The French newspapers still contained vague and cheerful bulletins about their own military situation, and filled the rest of their meagre space with eloquent praise of les braves petits Belges.  The war was still hidden behind impenetrable walls of silence.  Gradually, however, as I dodged about the western side of France, from the middle to the end of August, it became clear to me, and to my two friends, the Philosopher and the Strategist, who each in his way of wisdom confirmed my worst suspicions, that the situation for both the French and the British armies was enormously grave.  In spite of the difficulty of approaching the war zone—­at that time there was no certain knowledge as to the line of front—­we were seeing things which could not be concealed by any censorship.  We saw, too clearly for any doubt, that the war zone was approaching us, steadily and rapidly.  The shadow of its looming terror crept across the fields of France, though they lay all golden in the sunlight of the harvest month.