Kings, Queens, and Pawns | Page 2

of battle. It is
much more than that. War is a boy carried on a stretcher, looking up at
God's blue sky with bewildered eyes that are soon to close; war is a
woman carrying a child that has been wounded by a shell; war is
spirited horses tied in burning buildings and waiting for death; war is
the flower of a race, torn, battered, hungry, bleeding, up to its knees in
icy water; war is an old woman burning a candle before the Mater
Dolorosa for the son she has given. For King and Country!
CHAPTER I
TAKING A CHANCE

I started for the Continent on a bright day early in January. I was
searched by a woman from Scotland Yard before being allowed on the
platform. The pockets of my fur coat were examined; my one piece of
baggage, a suitcase, was inspected; my letters of introduction were
opened and read.
"Now, Mrs. Rinehart," she said, straightening, "just why are you
going?"
I told her exactly half of why I was going. I had a shrewd idea that the
question in itself meant nothing. But it gave her a good chance to look
at me. She was a very clever woman.
And so, having been discovered to be carrying neither weapons nor
seditious documents, and having an open and honest eye, I was allowed
to go through the straight and narrow way that led to possible
destruction. Once or twice, later on, I blamed that woman for letting me
through. I blamed myself for telling only half of my reasons for going.
Had I told her all she would have detained me safely in England, where
automobiles sometimes go less than eighty miles an hour, and where a
sharp bang means a door slamming in the wind and not a shell
exploding, where hostile aeroplanes overhead with bombs and
unpleasant little steel darts, were not always between one's eyes and
heaven. She let me through, and I went out on the platform.
The leaving of the one-o'clock train from Victoria Station, London, is
an event and a tragedy. Wounded who have recovered are going back;
soldiers who have been having their week at home are returning to that
mysterious region across the Channel, the front.
Not the least of the British achievements had been to transport, during
the deadlock of the first winter of the war, almost the entire army, in
relays, back to England for a week's rest. It had been done without the
loss of a man, across a channel swarming with hostile submarines.
They came in thousands, covered with mud weary, eager, their eyes
searching the waiting crowd for some beloved face. And those who
waited and watched as the cars emptied sometimes wept with joy and
sometimes turned and went away alone.

Their week over, rested, tidy, eyes still eager but now turned toward
France, the station platform beside the one-o'clock train was filled with
soldiers going back. There were few to see them off; there were not
many tears. Nothing is more typical of the courage and patriotism of
the British women than that platform beside the one-o'clock train at
Victoria. The crowd was shut out by ropes and Scotland Yard men
stood guard. And out on the platform, saying little because words are so
feeble, pacing back and forth slowly, went these silent couples. They
did not even touch hands. One felt that all the unselfish stoicism and
restraint would crumble under the familiar touch.
The platform filled. Sir Purtab Singh, an Indian prince, with his suite,
was going back to the English lines. I had been a neighbour of his at
Claridge's Hotel in London. I caught his eye. It was filled with cold
suspicion. It said quite plainly that I could put nothing over on him. But
whether he suspected me of being a newspaper writer or a spy I do not
know.
Somehow, considering that the train was carrying a suspicious and
turbaned Indian prince, any number of impatient officers and soldiers,
and an American woman who was carefully avoiding the war office
and trying to look like a buyer crossing the Channel for hats, the
whistle for starting sounded rather inadequate. It was not martial. It was
thin, effeminate, absurd. And so we were off, moving slowly past that
line on the platform, where no one smiled; where grief and tragedy, in
that one revealing moment, were written deep. I shall never forget the
faces of the women as the train crept by.
And now the train was well under way. The car was very quiet. The
memory of those faces on the platform was too fresh. There was a
brown and weary officer across from me. He sat very still, looking
straight ahead. Long after the train had left