hen in solid columns, they
passed us unendingly, we going one way, they going the other. Mainly
they were afoot, though now and then a farm wagon would bulk above the
weaving ranks; and it would be loaded with bedding and furniture and
packed to overflowing with old women and babies. One wagon lacked
horses to draw it, and six men pulled in front while two men pushed at
the back to propel it. Some of the fleeing multitude looked like
townspeople, but the majority plainly were peasants. And of these
latter at least half wore wooden shoes so that the sound of their feet
on the cobbled roadbed made a clattering chorus that at times almost
drowned out the hiccuping voices of the guns behind them.

Occasionally there would be a man shoving a barrow, with a baby and
possibly a muddle of bedclothing in the barrow together. Every woman
carried a burden of some sort, which might be a pack tied in a cloth or
a cheap valise stuffed to bursting, or a baby--though generally it was
a baby; and nearly every man, in addition to his load of belongings, had
an umbrella under his arm. In this rainy land the carrying of umbrellas
is a habit not easily shaken off; and, besides, most of these people had
slept out at least one night and would probably sleep out another, and
an umbrella makes a sort of shelter if you have no better. I figure I
saw a thousand umbrellas if I saw one, and the sight of them gave a
strangely incongruous touch to the thing.

Yes, it gave a grotesque touch to it. The spectacle inclined one to
laugh, almost making one forget for a moment that here in this spectacle
one beheld the misery of war made concrete; that in the lorn state of
these poor folks its effects were focused and made vivid; that, while in
some way it touched every living creature on the globe, here it touched
them directly.

All the children, except the sick ones and the very young ones, walked,
and most of them carried small bundles too. I saw one little girl, who
was perhaps six years old, with a heavy wooden clock in her arms. The
legs of the children wavered under them sometimes from weakness or maybe
weariness, but I did not hear a single child whimper, or see a single
woman who wept, or hear a single man speak above a half whisper.

They drifted on by us, silent all, except for the sound of feet and
wheels; and, as I read the looks on their faces, those faces expressed
no emotion except a certain numbed, resigned, bovine bewildermen