e in that narrow street I
should become the helpless prey of the Shadows I had called up. They
were crowding upon me, enigmatic and insistent in their clinging air of
the grave that tasted of dust and of the bitter vanity of old hopes.

"Let's go back to the hotel, my boy," I said. "It's getting late."

It will be easily understood that I neither thought nor dreamt that night
of a possible war. For the next two days I went about amongst my fellow
men, who welcomed me with the utmost consideration and friendliness, but
unanimously derided my fears of a war. They would not believe in it. It
was impossible. On the evening of the second day I was in the hotel's
smoking room, an irrationally private apartment, a sanctuary for a few
choice minds of the town, always pervaded by a dim religious light, and
more hushed than any club reading-room I have ever been in. Gathered
into a small knot, we were discussing the situation in subdued tones
suitable to the genius of the place.

A gentleman with a fine head of white hair suddenly pointed an impatient
finger in my direction and apostrophised me.

"What I want to know is whether, should there be war, England would come
in."

The time to draw a breath, and I spoke out for the Cabinet without
faltering.

"Most assuredly. I should think all Europe knows that by this time."

He took hold of the lapel of my coat, and, giving it a slight jerk for
greater emphasis, said forcibly:

"Then, if England will, as you say, and all the world knows it, there can
be no war. Germany won't be so mad as that."

On the morrow by noon we read of the German ultimatum. The day after
came the declaration of war, and the Austrian mobilisation order. We
were fairly caught. All that remained for me to do was to get my party
out of the way of eventual shells. The best move which occurred to me
was to snatch them up instantly into the mountains to a Polish health
resort of great repute--which I did (at the rate of one hundred miles in
eleven hours) by the last civilian train permitted to leave Cracow for
the next three weeks.

And there we remained amongst the Poles from all parts of Poland, not
officially interned, but simply unable to obtain the permission to travel
by train, or road. It was a wonderful, a poignant two months. This is
not the time, and, perhaps, not the place, to enlarge upon the tragic
character of the situation; a whole people seeing the culmination of its
misfor