t in
beside her with obviously genuine alacrity. The hubbub swelled and rolled
in increasing delirium. Out of the upper windows of the Hotel Cecil, a
headquarters of the Air Force, a confetti of official forms fell in
spasmodic clouds. I returned soon to the empty room of an office where I
was likely to be alone; because, now the War was over, while listening to
the jollity of Peace which had just arrived, I could not get my thoughts
home from France, and what they were I cannot tell.

But there were some other memories, more easily borne. There was that
night, for instance, late in the August of 1914, when three of us were
getting away from Creil. It was time to go. We were not soldiers. Lying
on the floor of a railway carriage I tried to sleep, pillowed
involuntarily on someone's boot. I never knew to whom that foot
belonged, for the compartment was chaos, like the world. The carriage
light was feeble, and the faces I saw above me drooped under the glim,
wilted and dingy. The eyes of the dishevelled were shut, and this
traveller, counting the pulse of the wheels beneath, presently forgot
everything ... there was a crash, and my heart bounded me to my feet.
There had been a fortnight of excitements of this kind. A bag fell and
struck me back to the floor. Unseen people trampled over me, shouting.
Somebody cried: "Here they are!" A cascade of passengers and luggage
tumbled over to a station platform.

It was a chilly morning. And where were we? A clock in a tower said it
was five. People hurried without apparent reason in all directions. So
the world may appear to us if some day we find, to our surprise, that we
have returned from the dead. I leaned against a lamppost, my mind
gravel-rashed, and waited for something that could be understood. The
Germans would do. We heard the enemy was close, and that the railway
officials would get us away if they could. The morning became no warmer,
there was no coffee, and our tobacco pouches were empty. But at least we
were favoured with the chance of watching the French railwaymen at work.
This was a junction, and the men moved about as though they were only
busy on holiday traffic. They were easy and deliberate. I could see they
would hold that line to the last pull of cotton-waste, and would run
their trains while there was a mile of track. So we learned gradually
that confident invaders are baffled by railwaymen and other common
people, such as old women insistent on their cows