n were already weeping aloud.

When our car drew up at the door of the hotel, the manager himself came
to help my wife out. In the first moment I did not quite recognise him.
His luxuriant black locks were gone, his head was closely cropped, and as
I glanced at it he smiled and said: "I shall sleep at the barracks to-
night."

I cannot reproduce the atmosphere of that night, the first night after
mobilisation. The shops and the gateways of the houses were of course
closed, but all through the dark hours the town hummed with voices; the
echoes of distant shouts entered the open windows of our bedroom. Groups
of men talking noisily walked in the middle of the roadway escorted by
distressed women: men of all callings and of all classes going to report
themselves at the fortress. Now and then a military car tooting
furiously would whisk through the streets empty of wheeled traffic, like
an intensely black shadow under the great flood of electric lights on the
grey pavement.

But what produced the greatest impression on my mind was a gathering at
night in the coffee-room of my hotel of a few men of mark whom I was
asked to join. It was about one o'clock in the morning. The shutters
were up. For some reason or other the electric light was not switched
on, and the big room was lit up only by a few tall candles, just enough
for us to see each other's faces by. I saw in those faces the awful
desolation of men whose country, torn in three, found itself engaged in
the contest with no will of its own, and not even the power to assert
itself at the cost of life. All the past was gone, and there was no
future, whatever happened; no road which did not seem to lead to moral
annihilation. I remember one of those men addressing me after a period
of mournful silence compounded of mental exhaustion and unexpressed
forebodings.

"What do you think England will do? If there is a ray of hope anywhere
it is only there."

I said: "I believe I know what England will do" (this was before the news
of the violation of Belgian neutrality arrived), "though I won't tell
you, for I am not absolutely certain. But I can tell you what I am
absolutely certain of. It is this: If England comes into the war, then,
no matter who may want to make peace at the end of six months at the cost
of right and justice, England will keep on fighting for years if
necessary. You may reckon on that."

"What, even alone?" asked somebody across the room.