ople want to play with trip-
hammers and loaded guns. We know they do. And so, though
aware that there were spy-hunting listeners all around, a mad
desire to utter the forbidden tongue obsessed me. Wry faces from
Marie, emphasized by repeated pinches at each threatened
outbreak, brought me back to my senses and to Anglo-Saxon.

Not only one who spoke, but even one who understood the hated
tongue was a suspect. For the least knowledge of the enemy's
language was to some the hall-mark of a spy. The game played
throughout France and Belgium was to fling a sudden command at
the suspect, catching the unwary fellow off-guard, and thus trap
him into self-betrayal.

An official would say sharply: "Nehmen Sie ihre Hutte ab" (Take off
your hat). Or there would come a sudden challenge on the street,
"Wohin gehen Sie?" (Where are you going?) If instinctively one
obeyed or replied in German, he was there caught with the goods.

Our major domo under the influence of the coin, or what he had
procured at the vintner's in exchange therefor, grew a bit playful.
He suddenly flung open the door and cried, "Steigen Sie auf." If I
had comprehended his meaning involuntarily I would have
obeyed, but luckily my brain has a slow shifting language gear. By
the time it began dawning upon me that we had been told to
vacate the car Marie had fixed me with her eyes and gripped me
like a vise with her hand so that I knew that I was to stay put. One
man involuntarily started and then checked himself. He was so
patently a Frenchman though that everybody laughed. The major
domo chuckled and marched away, much pleased with his playful
humor.

At last, with much jolting, we started on our crawling journey.
Sometimes the snail-pace would be accelerated; our hopes would
then expand, only to collapse again with a bang. Again we would
be sidetracked to let coal-cars, cattle cars and flat cars with guns
go by. Civilians were ciphers in the new order, and if it served any
military purpose to dump us into the river, in we would have gone
with no questions asked. We sat about, a wilted and dispirited lot.
Occasionally some one would thrust his head out the window to
observe progress. He was generally rewarded by a view of the
Eiffel Tower from a new angle, for it seemed that we were simply
being shunted in and about and all around the city.

The most icy reserve must find itself cracked and thawing in the
intimacies which a jerking railway car precipitates