n or in the surgings of the crowds. Young fathers
of families shouted hoarsely for women who could not be found. Old
women, with shaking heads and trembling hands, raised shrill voices
in the vain hope that they might hear an answering call from sons or
daughters. Like people who had escaped from an earthquake to
some seashore where by chance a boat might come for them all,
these Belgian families struggled to the port of Dunkirk and waited
desperately for rescue. They were in a worse plight than shipwrecked
people, for no ship of good hope could take them home again.
Behind them the country lay in dust and flames, with hostile armies
encamped among the ruins of their towns.

For a little while I left these crowds and escaped to the quiet
sanctuary of a restaurant in the centre of the town. I remember that
some English officers came in and stared at me from their table with
hard eyes, suspicious of me as a spy, or, worse still, as a journalist.
In those days, having to dodge arrest at every turn, I had a most
unpatriotic hatred of those British officers whose stern eyes gimletted
my soul. They seemed to me so like the Prussian at his worst.
Afterwards, getting behind this mask of harness, by the magic of
official papers, I abandoned my dislike and saw only the virtue of our
men. I remember also that I ate at table opposite a pretty girl, with a
wanton's heart, who prattled to me, because I was an Englishman, as
though no war had come to make a mockery of love-in-idleness. I
stood up from the table, upsetting a glass so that it broke at the stem.
Outside the restaurant was the tramp of another multitude. But the
rhythm of those feet was different from the noise I had heard all day.
It was sharper and more marked. I guessed at once that many
soldiers were passing by, and that upon striding to the door I should
see another tragedy. From the doorway I watched an army in retreat.
It was the army of Antwerp marching into Dunkirk. I took off my hat
and watched with bared head.

They were but broken regiments, marching disorderly for the most
part, yet here and there were little bodies of men keeping step, with
shouldered rifles, in fine, grim pride. The municipal guards came by,
shoulder to shoulder, as on parade, but they were followed by long
convoys of mounted men on stumbling horses, who came with heaps
of disorderly salvage piled on to dusty wagons. Saddles and bridles
and bits, the uniforms of many regiments flung out h