[OCTOBER, 1914]
Along the straight, glistening road, through a dim arcade of drooping
trees, a tunnel of faded green and gold, dripping with the misty
rain of a late October afternoon, a human tide was flowing, not
swiftly, but slowly, with the patient, pathetic slowness of weary
feet, and numb brains, and heavy hearts.
Yet they were in haste, all of these old men and women, fathers
and mothers, and little children; they were flying as fast as
they could; either away from something that they feared, or toward
something that they desired.
That was the strange thing--the tide on the road flowed in two
directions.
Some fled away from ruined homes to escape the perils of war. Some
fled back to ruined homes to escape the desolation of exile. But
all were fugitives, anxious to be gone, striving along the road
one way or the other, and making no more speed than a creeping
snail's pace of unutterable fatigue. I saw many separate things
in the tide, and remembered them without noting.
A boy straining to push a wheelbarrow with his pale mother in it,
and his two little sisters trudging at his side. A peasant with his
two girls driving their lean, dejected cows back to some unknown
pasture. A bony horse tugging at a wagon heaped high with bedding
and household gear, on top of which sat the wrinkled grandmother
with the tiniest baby in her arms, while the rest of the family
stumbled alongside--and the cat was curled up on the softest coverlet
in the wagon. Two panting dogs, with red tongues hanging out, and
splayed feet clawing the road, tugging a heavy-laden cart while the
master pushed behind and the woman pulled in the shafts. Strange,
antique vehicles crammed with passengers. Couples and groups and
sometimes larger companies of foot-travellers. Now and then a
solitary man or woman, old and shabby, bundle on back, eyes on the
road, plodding through the mud and the mist, under the high archway
of yellowing leaves.
[Illustration: All were fugitives, anxious to be gone, ... and
making no more speed than a creeping snail's pace of unutterable
fatigue.]
All these distinct pictures I saw, yet it was all one vision--a
vision of humanity with its dumb companions in flight--infinitely
slow, painful, pitiful flight!
I saw no tears, I heard no cries of complaint. But beneath the
numb and patient haste on all those dazed faces I saw a question.
_“What have we done? Why has this thing come upon us and our
children?”_
Somewhere I heard a trumpet blown. The brazen spikes on the helmets
of a little troop of German soldiers flashed for an instant, far
down the sloppy road. Through the humid dusk came the dull, distant
booming of the unseen guns of conquest in Flanders.
That was the only answer.