quarters in Paris, these young peasants from the fields, these
underpaid clerks from city offices had had no voice in the declaration
of war. What could they know about international politics? Why
should they be the pawns of the political chessboard, played without
any regard for human life by diplomats and war lords and high
financiers? These poor weedy little men with the sallow faces of the
clerical class, in uniforms which hung loose round their undeveloped
frames, why should they be caught in the trap of this horrible machine
called "War" and let loose like a lot of mice against the hounds of
death? These peasants with slouching shoulders and loose limbs and
clumsy feet, who had been bringing in the harvest of France, after
their tilling and sowing and reaping, why should they be marched off
into tempests of shells which would hack off their strong arms and
drench unfertile fields with their blood? They had had to go, leaving all
the things that had given a meaning and purpose to their days, as
though God had commanded them, instead of groups of politicians
among the nations of Europe, damnably careless of human life. How
long will this fetish of international intrigue be tolerated by civilized
democracies which have no hatred against each other, until it is
inflamed by their leaders and then, in war itself, by the old savageries
of primitive nature?


14


I went down to the East frontier on the first day of mobilization. It was
in the evening when I went to take the train from the Gare de l'Est.
The station was filled with a seething crowd of civilians and soldiers,
struggling to get to the booking-offices, vainly seeking information as