and carried new-born
babies and gave pick-a-back rides to little brothers and sisters, came
along the way of retreat.

Each human being in the vast torrent of life will have an unforgettable
story of adventure to tell if life remains. As a novelist I should have
been glad to get their narratives along this road for a great story of
suffering and strange adventure, but there was no time for that and no
excuse.

When I met many of them they were almost beyond the power of words. The
hot sun of this September had beaten down upon them--scorching them as
in the glow of molten metal. Their tongues clave to their mouths with
thirst.

Some of them had that wild look in their eyes which is the first sign of
the delirium of thirst and fatigue.

Nothing to eat or drink could be found on the way from Paris. The little
roadside cafes had been cleared out by the preceding hordes.

Unless these people carried their own food and drink they could have
none except of the charity of their comrades in misfortune, and that
charity has exceeded all other acts of heroism in this war. Women gave
their last biscuit, their last little drop of wine, to poor mothers
whose children were famishing with thirst and hunger; peasant women fed
other women's babies when their own were satisfied.

It was a tragic road. At every mile of it there were people who had
fainted on the roadside and poor old men and women who could go no
further, but sat on the banks below the hedges, weeping silently or
bidding younger ones go forward and leave them to their fate. Young
women who had stepped out so jauntily at first were footsore and lame,
so they limped along with lines of pain about their lips and eyes.

Many of the taxicabs, bought at great prices, and many of the motor cars
had broken down as I passed, and had been abandoned by their owners, who
had decided to walk. Farmers' carts had bolted into ditches and lost
their wheels. Wheelbarrows, too heavy to be trundled, had been tilted
up, with all their household goods spilt into the roadway, and the
children had been carried further, until at last darkness came, and
their only shelter was a haystack in a field under the harvest moon.

For days also I have been wedged up with fugitives in railway trains
more dreadful than the open roads, stifling in their heat and
heart-racking in their cargoes of misery. Poor women have wept
hysterically clasping my hand, a stranger's hand, for comfort in their
wretc