ttalions of London cabbies who had ravaged the dustbins for
discarded "toppers." Their double-breasted coats had just the cut of
those of the ancient jehus who used to sit aloft on decrepit "growlers."
Other bodies of Belgian soldiers wore ludicrous little kepis with
immense eye-shades, mostly broken or hanging limp in a dejected
way. In times of peace I should have laughed at the look of them. But
now there was nothing humorous about these haggard, dirty men
from Ghent who had borne the first shock of the German attack. They
seemed stupefied for lack of sleep, or dazed after the noise of battle.
I asked some of them where they were going, but they shook their
heads and answered gloomily:

"We don't know. We know nothing, except that our Belgium is
destroyed. What is the news?"

23

There was no news--beyond what one could glean from the
incoherent tales of Belgian refugees. The French newspapers still
contained vague and cheerful bulletins about their own military
situation, and filled the rest of their meagre space with eloquent
praise of les braves petits Belges. The war was still hidden behind
impenetrable walls of silence. Gradually, however, as I dodged about
the western side of France, from the middle to the end of August, it
became clear to me, and to my two friends, the Philosopher and the
Strategist, who each in his way of wisdom confirmed my worst
suspicions, that the situation for both the French and the British
armies was enormously grave. In spite of the difficulty of approaching
the war zone--at that time there was no certain knowledge as to the
line of front--we were seeing things which could not be concealed by
any censorship. We saw, too clearly for any doubt, that the war zone
was approaching us, steadily and rapidly. The shadow of its looming
terror crept across the fields of France, though they lay all golden in
the sunlight of the harvest month.

24

After the struggling tides of fugitive tourists, and overlapping the
waves of Belgian refugees, there came new streams of panic-stricken
people, and this time they were French. They came from the northern
towns--Lille, Roubaix, Tourcoing, Armentieres, and from scores of
villages further south which had seemed utterly safe and aloof from
hostile armies which, with faith in official communiques issued by the
French Ministry of War, we believed to be still checked beyond the
French frontier in Belgium. Lille? Was Lille threatened by the Kai