Early next morning there was a thrill of anxiety in Amiens itself.  Reports had come through that the railway line had been cut between Boulogne and Abbeville.  There had been mysterious movements of regiments from the town barracks.  They had moved out of Amiens, and there was a strange quietude in the streets, hardly a man in uniform to be seen in places which had been filled with soldiers the day before.  I think only a few people realized the actual significance of all this.  Only a few—­the friends of officers or the friends of officers’ friends—­had heard that Amiens itself was to be evacuated.

To these people it seemed incredible and horrible—­an admission that France was being beaten to her knees.  How could they believe the theory of an optimist among them that it was a part of a great plan to secure the safety of France?  How could they realize that the town itself would be saved from possible bombardment by this withdrawal of the troops to positions which would draw the Germans into the open?  They only knew that they were undefended, and presently they found that the civilian trains were being suspended, and that there would be no way of escape.  It was in the last train that by a stroke of luck I escaped from Amiens.  Shortly afterwards the tunnel leading to the junction was blown up by the French engineers, and the beautiful city of Amiens was cut off from all communication with the outer world.

It was on the last train that I realized to the full of its bitterness the brutality of war as it bludgeons the heart of the non-combatant.  In the carriage with me were French ladies and children who had been hunted about the country in the endeavour to escape the zone of military operations.  Their husbands were fighting for France, and they could not tell whether they were alive or dead.  They had been without any solid food for several days, and the nerves of those poor women were tried to the uttermost, not by any fear for their own sakes, but for the sake of the little ones who were all they could save from the wreckage of their lives, all yet enough if they could save them to the end.  One lady whose house had been burnt by the Germans had walked over twenty miles with a small boy and girl.

For a little while, when she told me her story she wept passionately, yet only for a few minutes.  For the sake of her handsome boy, who had a hero’s courage, and for the tiny girl who clung to her, she resisted this breakdown and conquered herself.

“That is the real meaning of war, almost the worst tragedy of it” (so I wrote at the time).  “The soldier suffers less than the women and the non-combatants.  His agony perhaps is sharper, but the wound of the spirit is hardest to bear.”