smoke denser than the dust about them now, while they vomited forth
shells at the unseen enemy whose guns would answer with the roar
of death.

Guns and men, horses and wagons, interminable convoys of
munitions, great armies on the march, trainloads of soldiers on all the
branch lines, soldiers bivouacked in the roadways and in market
places, long processions of young civilians carrying bundles to
military depots where they would change their clothes and all their
way of life--these pictures of preparation for war flashed through the
carriage windows into my brain, mile after mile, through the country of
France, until sometimes I closed my eyes to shut out the glare and
glitter of this kaleidoscope, the blood-red colour of all those French
trousers tramping through the dust, the lurid blue of all those soldiers'
overcoats, the sparkle of all those gun-wheels. What does it all mean,
this surging tide of armed men? What would it mean in a day or two,
when another tide of men had swept up against it, with a roar of
conflict, striving to overwhelm this France and to swamp over its
barriers in waves of blood? How senseless it seemed that those mild-
eyed fellows outside my carriage windows, chatting with the girls while
we waited for the signals to fall, should be on their way to kill other
mild-eyed men, who perhaps away in Germany were kissing other
girls, for gifts of fruit and flowers.


22


It was at this station near Toul that I heard the first words of hatred.
They were in a conversation between two French soldiers who had