ng of the past, the great historical past in
which lived the inextinguishable spark of national life; and all around
us the centuries-old buildings lay still and empty, composing themselves
to rest after a year of work on the minds of another generation.

No echo of the German ultimatum to Russia penetrated that academical
peace. But the news had come. When we stepped into the street out of
the deserted main quadrangle, we three, I imagine, were the only people
in the town who did not know of it. My boy and I parted from the
librarian (who hurried home to pack up for his holiday) and walked on to
the hotel, where we found my wife actually in the car waiting for us to
take a run of some ten miles to the country house of an old school-friend
of mine. He had been my greatest chum. In my wanderings about the world
I had heard that his later career both at school and at the University
had been of extraordinary brilliance--in classics, I believe. But in
this, the iron-grey moustache period of his life, he informed me with
badly concealed pride that he had gained world fame as the Inventor--no,
Inventor is not the word--Producer, I believe would be the right term--of
a wonderful kind of beetroot seed. The beet grown from this seed
contained more sugar to the square inch--or was it to the square
root?--than any other kind of beet. He exported this seed, not only with
profit (and even to the United States), but with a certain amount of
glory which seemed to have gone slightly to his head. There is a
fundamental strain of agriculturalist in a Pole which no amount of
brilliance, even classical, can destroy. While we were having tea
outside, looking down the lovely slope of the gardens at the view of the
city in the distance, the possibilities of the war faded from our minds.
Suddenly my friend's wife came to us with a telegram in her hand and said
calmly: "General mobilisation, do you know?" We looked at her like men
aroused from a dream. "Yes," she insisted, "they are already taking the
horses out of the ploughs and carts." I said: "We had better go back to
town as quick as we can," and my friend assented with a troubled look:
"Yes, you had better." As we passed through villages on our way back we
saw mobs of horses assembled on the commons with soldiers guarding them,
and groups of villagers looking on silently at the officers with their
note-books checking deliveries and writing out receipts. Some old
peasant wome