s, and elderly, clean-shaven
men quietly thoughtful over their long pipes. They had no fear of their
invaders; the days when 'soldiering' meant bands of licentious looters
had long since passed away....

That watcher among the clouds would have seen a great distribution of
khaki-uniformed men and khaki-painted material over the whole of the
sunken area of Holland. He would have marked the long trains, packed
with men or piled with great guns and war material, creeping slowly,
alert for train-wreckers, along the north-going lines; he would have
seen the Scheldt and Rhine choked with shipping, and pouring out still
more men and still more material; he would have noticed halts and
provisionings and detrainments, and the long, bustling caterpillars of
cavalry and infantry, the maggot-like wagons, the huge beetles of great
guns, crawling under the poplars along the dykes and roads northward,
along ways lined by the neutral, unmolested, ambiguously observant
Dutch. All the barges and shipping upon the canals had been
requisitioned for transport. In that clear, bright, warm weather, it
would all have looked from above like some extravagant festival of
animated toys.

As the sun sank westward the spectacle must have become a little
indistinct because of a golden haze; everything must have become warmer
and more glowing, and because of the lengthening of the shadows more
manifestly in relief. The shadows of the tall churches grew longer and
longer, until they touched the horizon and mingled in the universal
shadow; and then, slow, and soft, and wrapping the world in fold after
fold of deepening blue, came the night--the night at first obscurely
simple, and then with faint points here and there, and then jewelled in
darkling splendour with a hundred thousand lights. Out of that mingling
of darkness and ambiguous glares the noise of an unceasing activity
would have arisen, the louder and plainer now because there was no
longer any distraction of sight.

It may be that watcher drifting in the pellucid gulf beneath the stars
watched all through the night; it may be that he dozed. But if he gave
way to so natural a proclivity, assuredly on the fourth night of the
great flank march he was aroused, for that was the night of the battle
in the air that decided the fate of Holland. The aeroplanes were
fighting at last, and suddenly about him, above and below, with cries
and uproar rushing out of the four quarters of heaven, striking,