Those newspaper men did not get much rest in their quest for truth, not caring much, if the truth may be told, for what the English public chose to think or not to think, but eager to see more of the great drama and to plunge again into its amazing vortex.

Almost before the fugitives who had come with us had found time to smell the sea we were back again along the road to Paris, fretful to be there before it was closed by a hostile army and a ring of fire.

13

There are people who say that Paris showed no sign of panic when the Germans were at their gates.  “The calmness with which Paris awaits the siege is amazing,” wrote one of my confreres, and he added this phrase:  “There is no sign of panic.”  He was right if by panic one meant a noisy fear, of crowds rushing wildly about tearing out handfuls of their hair, and shrieking in a delirium of terror.  No, there was no clamour of despair in Paris when the enemy came close to its gates.  But if by panic one may mean a great fear spreading rapidly among great multitudes of people, infectious as a fell disease so that men ordinarily brave felt gripped with a sudden chill at the heart, and searched desperately for a way of escape from the advancing peril, then Paris was panic-stricken.

I have written many words about the courage of Paris, courage as fine and noble as anything in history, and in a later chapter of this book I hope to reveal the strength as well as the weakness in the soul of Paris.  But if there is any truth in my pen it must describe that exodus by one and a half millions of people who, under the impulse of a great fear—­what else was it?—­fled by any means and any road from the capital which they love better than any city in the world because their homes are there and their pride and all that has given beauty to their ideals.

In those few days before the menace passed the railway stations were stormed and stormed again, throughout the day and night, by enormous crowds such as I had seen on that night of September 2.  Because so many bridges had been blown up and so many lines cut on the way to Calais and Boulogne, in order to hamper the enemy’s advance, and because what had remained were being used for the transport of troops, it was utterly impossible to provide trains for these people.  Southwards the way was easier, though from that direction also regiments of French soldiers were being rushed up to the danger zone.  The railway officials under the pressure of this tremendous strain, did their best to hurl out the population of Paris, somehow and anyhow.  For military reasons the need was urgent, The less mouths to feed the better in a besieged city.  So when all the passenger trains had been used, cattle trucks were put together and into them, thanking God, tumbled fine ladies of France, careless of the filth which stained their silk frocks, and rich Americans who had travelled far to Paris for the sake of safety, who offered great bribes to any man who would yield his place between wooden boards for a way out again, and bourgeois families who had shut up shops from the Rue de la Paix to the Place Pigalle, heedless for once of loss or ruin, but desperate to get beyond the range of German shells and the horrors of a beleaguered city.