We were no more than well clear of that immobile host when it
all surged forward, headed by massed bands playing a tune that
sounded like the very pulse of France.
The two Generals, with their Staff, and the French Minister
for War, were on foot near a patch of very green lucerne.
They made about twenty figures in all. The cars were little
grey blocks against the grey skyline. There was nothing else
in all that great plain except the army; no sound but the
changing notes of the aeroplanes and the blunted impression,
rather than noise, of feet of men on soft ground. They came
over a slight ridge, so that one saw the curve of it first
furred, then grassed, with the tips of bayonets, which
immediately grew to full height, and then, beneath them,
poured the wonderful infantry. The speed, the thrust, the
drive of that broad blue mass was like a tide-race up an arm
of the sea; and how such speed could go with such weight, and
how such weight could be in itself so absolutely under
control, filled one with terror. All the while, the band, on
a far headland, was telling them and telling them (as if they
did not know!) of the passion and gaiety and high heart of
their own land in the speech that only they could fully
understand. (To hear the music of a country is like hearing a
woman think aloud.)
"What _is_ the tune?" I asked of an officer beside me.
"My faith, I can't recall for the moment. I've marched to it
often enough, though. 'Sambre-et-Meuse,' perhaps. Look!
There goes my battalion! Those Chasseurs yonder."
_He_ knew, of course; but what could a stranger identify in
that earth-shaking passage of thirty thousand?