express speed. Those journeys of mine had been
more like pilgrimages when one hurries on towards the goal for the
satisfaction of a deeper need than curiosity. In this last instance,
too, I was so incurious that I would have liked to have fallen asleep on
the shores of England and opened my eyes, if it were possible, only on
the other side of the Silesian frontier. Yet, in truth, as many others
have done, I had "sensed it"--that promised land of steel, of chemical
dyes, of method, of efficiency; that race planted in the middle of
Europe, assuming in grotesque vanity the attitude of Europeans amongst
effete Asiatics or barbarous niggers; and, with a consciousness of
superiority freeing their hands from all moral bonds, anxious to take up,
if I may express myself so, the "perfect man's burden." Meantime, in a
clearing of the Teutonic forest, their sages were rearing a Tree of
Cynical Wisdom, a sort of Upas tree, whose shade may be seen now lying
over the prostrate body of Belgium. It must be said that they laboured
openly enough, watering it with the most authentic sources of all
madness, and watching with their be-spectacled eyes the slow ripening of
the glorious blood-red fruit. The sincerest words of peace, words of
menace, and I verily believe words of abasement, even if there had been a
voice vile enough to utter them, would have been wasted on their ecstasy.
For when the fruit ripens on a branch it must fall. There is nothing on
earth that can prevent it.

II.

For reasons which at first seemed to me somewhat obscure, that one of my
companions whose wishes are law decided that our travels should begin in
an unusual way by the crossing of the North Sea. We should proceed from
Harwich to Hamburg. Besides being thirty-six times longer than the Dover-
Calais passage this rather unusual route had an air of adventure in
better keeping with the romantic feeling of this Polish journey which for
so many years had been before us in a state of a project full of colour
and promise, but always retreating, elusive like an enticing mirage.

And, after all, it had turned out to be no mirage. No wonder they were
excited. It's no mean experience to lay your hands on a mirage. The day
of departure had come, the very hour had struck. The luggage was coming
downstairs. It was most convincing. Poland then, if erased from the
map, yet existed in reality; it was not a mere _pays du reve_, where you
can travel only in