Paths of Glory | Page 6

distressful fix we could have
appreciated the humor of the spectacle of a portly high dignitary of the
United States Medical Corps shoving a truck piled high with his
belongings, and shortly afterward, with the help of his own wife,
loading them on the roof of an infirm and wheezy taxicab.
From Liverpool across to London we traveled through a drowsy land
burdened with bumper crops of grain, and watched the big brown hares
skipping among the oat stacks; and late at night we came to London. In
London next day there were more troops about than common, and
recruits were drilling on the gravel walks back of Somerset House; and
the people generally moved with a certain sober restraint, as people do
who feel the weight of a heavy and an urgent responsibility. Otherwise
the London of wartime seemed the London of peacetime.
So within a day our small party, still seeking to slip into the wings of
the actual theater of events rather than to stay so far back behind the
scenes, was aboard a Channel ferryboat bound for Ostend, and having
for fellow travelers a few Englishmen, a tall blond princess of some
royal house of Northern Europe, and any number of Belgians going
home to enlist. In the Straits of Dover, an hour or so out from
Folkestone, we ran through a fleet of British warships guarding the
narrow roadstead between France and England; and a torpedo-boat
destroyer sidled up and took a look at us.
Just off Dunkirk a French scout ship talked with us by the language of
the whipping signal flags; but the ordinary Channel craft came and
went without hindrance or seeming fear, and again it was hard for us to
make ourselves believe that we had reached a zone where the physical,
tangible business of war went forward.
And Ostend and, after Ostend, the Belgian interior--those were
disappointments too; for at Ostend bathers disported on the long,
shining beach and children played about the sanded stretch. And,

though there were soldiers in sight, one always expects soldiers in
European countries. No one asked to see the passports we had brought
with us, and the customs officers gave our hand baggage the most
perfunctory of examinations. Hardly five minutes had elapsed after our
landing before we were steaming away on our train through a landscape
which, to judge by its appearance, might have known only peace, and
naught but peace, for a thousand placid years.
It is true we saw during that ride few able-bodied male adults, either in
the towns through which we rushed or in the country. There were
priests occasionally and old, infirm men or half-grown boys; but of
men in their prime the land had been drained to fill up the army of
defense then on the other side of Belgium--toward Germany--striving
to hold the invaders in check until the French and English might come
up. The yellow-ripe grain stood in the fields, heavy-headed and
drooping with seed. The russet pears and red apples bent the limbs of
the fruit trees almost to earth. Every visible inch of soil was under
cultivation, of the painfully intensive European sort; and there
remained behind to garner the crops only the peasant women and a few
crippled, aged grand- sires. It was hard for us to convince ourselves that
any event out of the ordinary beset this country. No columns of troops
passed along the roads; no camps of tents lifted their peaked tops above
the hedges. In seventy-odd miles we encountered one small detachment
of soldiers--they were at a railroad station--and one Red Cross flag.
As for Brussels--why, Brussels at first glance was more like a city
making a fete than the capital of a nation making war. The flags which
were displayed everywhere; the crowds in the square before the
railroad station; the multitudes of boy scouts running about; the
uniforms of Belgian volunteers and regulars; the Garde Civique, in
their queer- looking costumes, with funny little derby hats, all
braid-trimmed--gave to the place a holiday air. After nightfall, when
the people of Brussels flocked to the sidewalk cafes and sat at little
round tables under awnings, drinking light drinks a la Parisienne, this
impression was heightened.
We dined in the open air ourselves, finding the prices for food and

drink to be both moderate and modest, and able to see nothing on the
surface which suggested that the life of these people had been seriously
disturbed. Two significant facts, however, did obtrude themselves on us:
Every minute or two, as we dined, a young girl or an old gentleman
would come to us, rattling a tin receptacle with a slot in the top through
which coins for the aid of the widows and orphans of dead soldiers
might be dropped;