y hours over it, and that was considered good
going. The theory of circulating trains turned out to be entirely
wrong. We changed at wayside stations, standing for hours on desolate
platforms. We pursued trains into remote sidings in the middle of the
night, tripping over wires and stumbling among sleepers. We ate
things of an unusual kind at odd hours. We slept by snatches. I
shaved and washed in a tin mug full of water drawn from the side of
an engine. M., indomitably cheerful, secured buns and apples at 6
o'clock in the morning. He paid for the buns. I believe he looted the
apples out of a truck in a siding near our carriage.

We found ourselves at noon in a large town with four hours' leisure
before us. An R.T.O.--we reported to every R.T.O. we could
find--recommended an excellent restaurant. M. shaved and washed
elaborately in a small basin which the thoughtful proprietor had
placed in the passage outside the dining-room door. We had a huge
meal and made friends with a French officer who was attached to some
of our troops as interpreter. He had spent two years before the war
at Cambridge. There perhaps, more probably elsewhere, he had been
taught that Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb are the most influential people
in England, and that Mr. H. G. Wells, though not from a purely
literary point of view a great writer, is the most profound
philosopher in the world. He deeply lamented the fact that compulsory
military service had just been introduced into England.

"The last fortress of individual liberty," he said, "has fallen. The
world is now militarised."

I reminded him that Ireland still remained a free country; but he did
not seem consoled. He took the view that the Irish, though not
compelled to fight, are an oppressed people.

I found that interpreter an interesting man, though he would not talk
about the early fighting at Charleroi where he had been wounded. I
should much rather have heard about that. Lyrical eulogies of Mr. and
Mrs. Sidney Webb seemed out of place. I had been "militarised" for no
more than four days. But I already felt as if the world in which
clever people suppose themselves to think were a half-forgotten
dream. The only reality for me was that other world in which men,
who do not profess to be clever, suppose themselves to be doing
things. On the whole the soldiers, though they fuss a good deal, seem
to have a better record of actual accomplishment than the thinkers.

The last stage of our jo