out heads, in spite of the night air with
a bite of frost in it. I dozed uneasily with horrid dreams as I sat on
three inches of hard box, with my head jogging sideways. Always I
was conscious of the evil smell about me, but when the peasant was
still I was able to suffer' it, because of sheer weariness, which
deadened my senses. It was when he moved, disturbing invisible
layers of air, that I awakened horribly.

10

For the nice people of the world whom fate had pampered, there was
a cruelty in this mode of travel. Hunger, with its sharp tooth, assailed
some of them for the first time. We stopped at wayside stations--still
more often between the stations--but American millionaires and
English aristocrats were stupefied to find that not all their money
could buy a sandwich. Most of the buffets had been cleaned out by
the army passing to the front. Thirst, intolerable and choking, was a
greater pain in those hot dog-days and in those tedious interminable
journeys.

Yet it is only fair to say that on the whole those tourists chased across
the Continent by the advancing spectre of war, behaved with pluck
and patience. Some of them had suffered grievous loss. From Bale
and Geneva to Paris and Boulogne the railways were littered with
their abandoned luggage, too bulky to be loaded into overcrowded
trains. On the roads of France were broken-down motor-cars which
had cost large sums of money in New York and London. But because
war's stupendous evil makes all other things seem trivial, and the gifts
of liberty and life are more precious than wealth or luxury, so these
rich folk in misfortune fraternized cheerfully in the discussion of their
strange adventures and shared the last drop of hot tea in a Thermos
flask with the generous instincts of shipwrecked people dividing their
rations on a desert isle.

11

This flight of the pleasure-seekers was the first revelation of the way
in which war would hurt the non-combatant and sacrifice his business
or his comfort to its supreme purpose. Fame was merely foolishness
when caught in the trap of martial law. I saw a man of European
reputation flourish his card before railway officials, to be thrust back
by the butt end of a rifle, No money could buy a seat in a railway
carriage already crowded to suffocation. No threat to write a letter to
the Times would avail an old-fashioned Englishman when his train
was shunted for hours on to a side line to make way for troop trains