ser's
troops? It had been evacuated? No, that could not be true, unless
treachery had been at work, Lille could hold out, surely, at least as
long as Liege! Had we not read long articles by the military experts of
the French Press describing the strength of that town and the
impregnable position of its forts? Yet here were refugees from Lille
who had heard the roar of German guns, and brought incredible
stories of French troops in retreat, and spoke the name of a French
general with bitter scorn, and the old cry of "Nous sommes trahis!"

The refugees from the north were in as pitiable a state as those who
had preceded them from Belgium. More pitiable, because when they
reached such ports as Calais or Boulogne or Havre, the hotels and
lodging-houses were overcrowded from attic to cellars, the buffets
had been swept clear of food, and committees of relief were already
distracted with the overwhelming needs of a Belgian invasion.

25

I remember a day and night in Boulogne. The narrow streets--evil with
odours brought forth by a hot sun, were filled with surging crowds
which became denser as new trains arrived from Calais and Dunkirk
and junctions on northern lines. The people carried with them the
salvage of their homes, wrapped up in blankets, sheets, towels and
bits of ragged paper. Parcels of grotesque shapes, containing
copper pots, frying pans, clocks, crockery and all kinds of
domestic utensils or treasured ornaments, bulged on the pavements
and quaysides, where whole families sat encamped. Stalwart
mothers of Normandy and Picardy trudged through the streets with
children clinging to their skirts, with babies in their arms and with big
French loaves--the commissariat of these journeys of despair--
cuddled to their bosoms with the babes. Old grandfathers and
grandmothers, who looked as though they had never left their native
villages before, came hand in hand, with shaking heads and watery
eyes, bewildered by all this turmoil of humanity which had been thrust
out, like themselves, from its familiar ways of life. Well-to-do
bourgeois, shot with frayed nerves, exhausted by an excess of
emotion and fatigue, searched for lodgings, anywhere and at any
price, jostled by armies of peasants, shaggy-haired, in clumping
sabots, with bundles on their backs, who were wandering on the
same quest for the sake of the women and children dragging wearily
in their wake. I heard a woman cry out words of surrender: "Je n'en
peu