Travelling with two chauffeurs is not the luxury it looks;
since there is only one of you and there is always another of
those iron men to relieve the wheel. Nor can I decide whether
an ex-professor of the German tongue, or an ex-roadracer who
has lived six years abroad, or a Marechal des Logis, or a
Brigadier makes the most thrusting driver through three-mile
stretches of military traffic repeated at half-hour intervals.
Sometimes it was motor-ambulances strung all along a level; or
supply; or those eternal big guns coming round corners with
trees chained on their long backs to puzzle aeroplanes, and
their leafy, big-shell limbers snorting behind them. In the
rare breathing-spaces men with rollers and road metal attacked
the road. In peace the roads of France, thanks to the motor,
were none too good. In war they stand the incessant traffic
far better than they did with the tourist. My impression
--after some seven hundred miles printed off on me at between 60
and 70 kilometres--was of uniform excellence. Nor did I come
upon any smashes or breakdowns in that distance, and they were
certainly trying them hard. Nor, which is the greater marvel,
did _we_ kill anybody; though we did miracles down the streets
to avoid babes, kittens, and chickens. The land is used to
every detail of war, and to its grime and horror and
make-shifts, but also to war's unbounded courtesy, kindness,
and long-suffering, and the gaiety that comes, thank God, to
balance overwhelming material loss.