e speech, even here in this little
commune, whose silence is broken only by the rumbling of the trains
passing, in view of my garden, on the way to the frontier, and the
footsteps of the groups on the way to the train, I have seen sights that
have moved me as nothing I have ever met in life before has done. Day
after day I have watched the men and their families pass silently, and
an hour later have seen the women come back leading the children. One
day I went to Couilly to see if it was yet possible for me to get to
Paris. I happened to be in the station when a train was going out.
Nothing goes over the line yet but men joining their regiments. They
were packed in like sardines. There were no uniforms--just a crowd of
men--men in blouses, men in patched jackets, well-dressed men--no
distinction of class; and on the platform the women and children they
were leaving. There was no laughter, none of the gayety with which one
has so often reproached this race--but neither were there any tears. As
the crowded train began to move, bare heads were thrust out of windows,
hats were waved, and a great shout of "Vive la France" was answered by
piping children's voices, and the choked voices of women--"Vive
l'Armee"; and when the train was out of sight the women took the
children by the hand, and quietly climbed the hill.

Ever since the 4th of August all our crossroads have been guarded, all
our railway gates closed, and also guarded--guarded by men whose only
sign of being soldiers is a cap and a gun, men in blouses with a
mobilization badge on their left arms, often in patched trousers and
sabots, with stern faces and determined eyes, and one thought--"The
country is in danger."

There is a crossroad just above my house, which commands the valley on
either side, and leads to a little hamlet on the route nationale from
Couilly to Meaux, arid is called "La Demi-Lune"--why "Half-Moon" I
don't know. It was there, on the 6th, that I saw, for the first time,
an armed barricade. The gate at the railway crossing had been opened to
let a cart pass, when an automobile dashed through Saint-Germain, which
is on the other side of the track. The guard raised his bayonet in the
air, to command the car to stop and show its papers, but it flew by him
and dashed up the hill. The poor guard--it was his first experience of
that sort--stood staring after the car; but the idea that he ought to
fire at it did not occur to him until it was