nts upon which there
lay, immobile, like men already dead, spent and exhausted soldiers.
They passed through crowds of silent people--the citizens of Amiens--
who only whispered as they stared at this procession in the darkness.
A cuirassier with his head bent upon his chest stumbled forward,
leading a horse too weak and tired to bear him. There were many
other men leading their poor beasts in this way; and infantry soldiers,
some of them with bandaged heads, clung on to the backs of the
carts and wagons, and seemed to be asleep as they shuffled by. The
light from the roadside lamps gleamed upon blanched faces and
glazed eyes--flashed now and then into the caverns of canvas-
covered carts where twisted, bandaged men lay huddled on the
straw. Not a groan came from those carts. There was no shout of
"Vive la France!" from the crowd of citizens who are not silent as a
rule when their soldiers pass.

Every one knew it was a retreat, and the knowledge was colder than
the mist of night. The carts, carrying the quick and the dead, rumbled
by in a long convoy, the drooping heads of the soldiers turned neither
to the right nor to the left for any greeting with old friends; there was a
hugger-mugger of uniforms on provision carts and ambulances. It
was a part of the wreckage and wastage of the war, and to the
onlooker, exaggerating unconsciously the importance of the things
close at hand and visible, it seemed terrible in its significance, and an
ominous reminder of 1870, when through Amiens there came the
dismal tramp of beaten men. Really this was the inevitable part of a
serious battle, and not necessarily the retreat from a great disaster.

I turned away from it, rather sick at heart. It is not a pleasant thing to
see men walking like living corpses, or as though drugged with
fatigue. It is heartrending to see poor beasts stumbling forward at
every step at the very last gasp of their strength until they fall never to
rise again.

But more pitiful even than this drift back from Bapeaume were the
scenes which followed immediately as I turned back into the town.
Thousands of boys had been called out to the colours, and had been
brought up from the country to be sent forward to the second lines of
defence. They were the reservists of the 1914 class, and many of
them were shouting and singing, though here and there a white-faced
boy tried to hide his tears as women from the crowd ran to embrace
him. The Marseillaise, the hymn