just come from X----. We were ordered
to leave. It is very difficult to find a place to settle down in."

Women passed. Two of them were dragging a little baby-carriage in which
an infant lay asleep. One of them was quite young, the other old. They
held up their skirts out of the mud. They were wearing little town
shoes, and every minute they sank into the slime like ourselves,
sometimes above their ankles.

All day long we encountered similar processions. I do not remember
seeing one of these women weep; but they seemed terrified, and mortally
tired.

Meanwhile, the sound of the guns became fuller and more regular. All the
roads we caught sight of in the country seemed to be bearing their load
of men and of machines. Here and there a horse which had succumbed at
its task lay rotting at the foot of a hillock. A subdued roar rose to
the ear, made up of trampling hoofs, of grinding wheels, of the buzz of
motors, and of a multitude talking and eating on the march.

Suddenly we debouched at the edge of a wood upon a height whence we
could see the whole battle-field. It was a vast expanse of plains and
slopes, studded with the grey woods of winter. Long trails of smoke from
burning buildings settled upon the landscape. And other trails, minute
and multi-coloured, rose from the ground wherever projectiles were
raining. Nothing more: wisps of smoke, brief flashes visible even
in broad daylight, and a string of captive balloons, motionless and
observant witnesses of all.

But we were already descending the incline and the various planes of the
landscape melted one after the other. As we were passing over a bridge,
I saw in a group of soldiers a friend I had not met since the beginning
of the war. We could not stop, so he walked along with me for a while,
and we spent these few minutes recalling the things of the past. Then as
he left me we embraced, though we had never done so in times of peace.

Night was falling. Knowing that we were now at our last long lap, we
encouraged the worn-out men. At R----I lost touch with my formation. I
halted on the roadside, calling aloud into the darkness. An artillery
train passed, covering me with mud to my eyes. Finally, I picked up my
friends, and we marched on through villages illumined by the camp fires
which were flickering under a driving rain, through a murky country
which the flash of cannon suddenly showed to be covered with a multitude
of men, of horses, and of martial object