It was never possible to tell the enemy’s next move.  His cavalry came riding swiftly far from the main lines of the hostile troops, and owing to the reticence of official news, the inhabitants of a town or village found themselves engulfed in the tide of battle before they guessed their danger.  They were trapped by the sudden tearing-up of railway lines and blowing-up of bridges, as I was nearly trapped one day when the Germans cut a line a few hundred yards away from my train.

Yet the terror was as great when no Germans were seen, and no shells heard.  It was enough that they were coming.  They had been reported—­often falsely—­across distant hills.  So the exodus began and, with perambulators laden with bread and apples, in any kind of vehicle—­even in a hearse—­drawn by poor beasts too bad for army requisitions, ladies of quality left their chateaux and drove in the throng with peasant women from whitewashed cottages.  Often in a little while both the chateau and the cottage were buried in the same heap of ruins.

In a week or two, the enemy was beaten back from some of these places, and then the most hardy of the townsfolk returned “home.”  I saw some of them going home-at Senlis, at Sermaize, and other places.  They came back doubtful of what they would find, but soon they stood stupefied in front of some charred timbers which were once their house.  They did not weep, but just stared in a dazed way.  They picked over the ashes and found burnt bits of former treasures—­ the baby’s cot, the old grandfather’s chair, the parlour clock.  Or they went into houses still standing neat and perfect, and found that some insanity of rage had smashed up all their household, as though baboons had been at play or fighting through the rooms.  The chest of drawers had been looted or its contents tumbled out upon the floor.  Broken glasses, bottles, jugs, were mixed up with a shattered violin, the medals of a grandfather who fought in ’70, the children’s broken toys, clothes, foodstuff, and picture frames.  I saw many of such houses after the coming and going of the German soldiers.

Even for a correspondent in search of a vantage-ground from which he might see something of this war, with a reasonable chance of being able to tell the story afterwards, the situation in France during those early days was somewhat perilous.

It is all very well to advance towards the fighting lines when the enemy is opposed by allied forces in a known position, but it is a quite different thing to wander about a countryside with only the vaguest idea of the direction in which the enemy may appear, and with the disagreeable thought that he may turn up suddenly round the corner after cutting off one’s line of retreat.  That was my experience on more than one day of adventure when I went wandering with those two friends of mine, whom I have alluded to as the Strategist and the Philosopher.  Not all the strategy of the one or the philosophy of the other could save us from unpleasant moments when we blundered close to the lines of an unexpected enemy.