s! I wonder. There is no actual buying and selling in open slave
markets, it is true, but the men who built the Pyramids and dragged the
stone for Hadrian's Villa, were they any worse off really than the
workers in the mines today? Upon my soul, I don't know. Life is only a
span between the Unknown and the Unknowable. Living is made up in all
centuries of just so many emotions. We have never, so far as I know,
invented any new one. It is too bad to throw these things at you on
paper which can't answer back as you would, and right sharply I know.

Nothing going on here except the passing now and then of a long line of
Paris street busses on the way to the front. They are all mobilized and
going as heroically to the front as if they were human, and going to get
smashed up just the same. It does give me a queer sensation to see them
climbing this hill. The little Montmartre-Saint-Pierre bus, that
climbs up the hill to the funicular in front of Sacre-Coeur, came up the
hill bravely. It was built to climb a hill. But the Bastille-Madeleine
and the Ternes-Fille de Calvaine, and Saint-Sulpice-Villette just
groaned and panted and had to have their traction changed every few
steps. I thought they would never get up, but they did.

Another day it was the automobile delivery wagons of the Louvre, the
Bon Marche, the Printemps, Petit-Saint-Thomas, La Belle Jardiniere,
Potin--all the automobiles with which you are so familiar in the
streets of Paris. Of course those are much lighter, and came up
bravely. As a rule they are all loaded. It is as easy to take men to
the front, and material, that way as by railroad, since the cars go.
Only once have I seen any attempt at pleasantry on these occasions.
One procession went out the other day with all sorts of funny
inscriptions, some not at all pretty, many blackguarding the Kaiser,
and of course one with the inevitable "A Berlin" the first battle-cry
of 1870. This time there has been very little of that. I confess it
gave me a kind of shiver to see "A Berlin--pour notre plaisir" all
over the bus. "On to Berlin!" I don't see that that can be hoped for
unless the Germans are beaten to a finish on the Rhine and the allied
armies cross Germany as conquerors, unopposed. If they only could! It
would only be what is due to Belgium that King Albert should lead the
procession "Under the Lindens." But I doubt if the maddest war
optimist hopes for anything so well deserved as that.