Various

“ One day it was sunshine and spring, with roads six inches deep in mud, no traffic, and nothing to remind one of war, except the wounded in the car and the distant roar of the guns, which sounded like a giant beating a carpet. The next day it was winter again, with mud turned to ice, the roads blocked with troops, and the Germans turning hell loose with their heavy guns.
In such a crisis as those first days around Verdun, ammunition and fresh men are the all-essential things. The wounded are the déchets, the ‘has-beens’, and so must take second place. ”

“ In some equine Elysium where there are neither flies nor dust nor steep hills nor heavy loads; where there is luscious young grass unlimited with cool streams and shady trees; where one can roam as one pleases and rest when one is tired: there, far from the racket of gun wheels on hard roads and the thunder of opposing artillery, oblivious of all the insensate folly of this warring human world, reposes, I doubt it not, the soul of Bilfred. ”

“ It was borne in upon him that, since her arrival in Oxford, Constance had gone through a great deal, and gone through it alone. For after all what had his efforts amounted to? What can a man friend do for a young girl in these fermenting years of her youth? And when the man friend knows very well that, but for an iron force upon himself, he himself would be among her lovers? Sorell felt himself powerless—in all the greater matters—and was inclined to think that he deserved to be powerless. ”

“ Tennyson wrote: ‘I cannot pretend to say that I do not prize a kindness done to mine, more than if it were done to myself, still I feel bound to point with a solemn finger to those stalwart boys of yours, saying “Remember.” I see that I shall have to set up a shop for the sale of photographs myself all for your benefit.’
To these remonstrances the photographer would answer: ‘I have always tried to get my husband to share my feelings—so long as illness and death are mercifully spared us. Death is as to deeper wounds—only a grain.’ Julia Cameron was not a woman of to-day. ”

“ There is nothing but ruins left of the lovely residential quarter below the Cathedral. The remaining walls of the houses, gutted by flame and shell, stand in a wavering line along a street, blocked with débris, and with furniture and household articles that the firemen have saved. The furniture is as safe in the middle of the street as anywhere else in the town. As I passed along I could hear from time to time the crash and roar of falling walls, and see the rising clouds of white stone dust that has settled thickly everywhere. ”

“ This knowing when to take to the cellar is a distinct characteristic of the French. They are not for taking any unnecessary risks as some of us are, but, when a dangerous job has to be done, they will go about it with a careless gaiety that is wholly unforced. It is this spirit which is holding up the French soldier to the admiration of the whole world; the spirit that has kept the German hordes out of Verdun, and that will continue to keep them at bay till the time is ripe for a concerted effort of the allied forces. ”

“ Strange men arrived to join the battery and in their ignorance took liberties with him which he resented. Every available space in the lines became crowded with unkempt, queer-looking horses, obviously of a low caste. Bilfred was shod a fortnight before his time by a new shoeing-smith, for whom he made things as unpleasant as possible. His harness, which usually looked like polished mahogany decorated with silver, was dubbed and oiled until it looked (and smelt) disgusting. When the battery went out on parade, all these absurd civilian horses with bushy tails (some even with manes!) ”

“ As they glide through the Suez Canal Mrs. Cameron writes:
‘It is an honour to the French nation that in the face of all assertions of impossibility from men of all countries, Lesseps persevered and achieved this mighty enterprise. Whilst I write we pass a pier and at the end of it is a whole flock of camels, with camel drivers waiting to see if any one cares to cross the Desert; no one does care, so we glide on. ”

“ One shell, accurately placed, will put a railway communication out of the running, but automobiles must be picked off one by one as they come within range.
The picture of the attack that will stay with me always is that of the Grande Route north from Bar-le-Duc, covered with the snow and ice of the last days of February. The road was always filled with two columns of trucks, one going north and the other coming south. The trucks, loaded with troops, shells, and bread, rolled and bobbled back and forth with the graceless, uncertain strength of baby elephants. ”

“ Yet the people there are more stalwart than in any district in England where every foot has its shoe. The finest lads I have ever come across are certainly the Montenegrin; and not one in twenty of them has either a shoe or a stocking. The only reformatory I have known where the little inmates are physically quite on a par with other children, as strong, alert, and light-hearted as other children, is the Eggenburg Reformatory, in Lower Austria, where both boys and girls all go barefoot, in winter as well as in summer. ”

“ It was a good team; some said the show one of the battery. The wheelers were Beatrice and Belinda, who knew their job as well as did their driver, whom they justly loved. Being old and dignified they never fretted, but took life calmly and contentedly. In the centre Bruno and Binty, young, both of them, and rather excitable, needed watching or they lost condition, but both had looks. The riding leader was old Bacchus, tall and strong and honest, a good doer and a veteran of some standing. Moreover, he was a perfect match for Bilfred. All six of them were of the same mottled dark-bay colour. ”

“ Then about four o’clock in the short winter twilight we passed two or three regiments of French colonial troops on the march with all their field equipment. I knew who and what they were by the curious Eastern smell that I had always before associated with camels and circuses. They were lined up on each side of the road around their soup kitchens, which were smoking busily, and I had a good look at them as we drove along.
It was the first time I had seen an African army in the field, and though they had had a long march they were cheerful and in high spirits at the prospect of battle. ”

“ Usually the two men drive two hours, turn and turn about; while one is driving, the other can eat, sleep, or read the day before yesterday’s newspaper. The French camions are organised in sections of twenty. Usually each section works in convoy, and has its name and mark painted on its cars. I saw some with elephants or ships, some with hearts or diamonds, clubs or spades, some with dice—in fact every imaginable symbol has been used to distinguish the thousands of sections in the service. The driver told me there were more than ten thousand trucks working between Verdun and Bar-le-Duc. ”

“ Nothing in the whole long train of thought prepares me for, or tends in any way to suggest this Sweet Lavender.
It is a building. In the language of the Army—the official language—it is a hut; but hardly more like the hut of civil life than it is like the flower from which it takes its name. The walls are of thin wood. The roof is corrugated iron. It contains two long low halls. Glaring electric lights hang from the rafters. They must glare if they are to shine at all, for the air is thick with tobacco smoke. Inside the halls are gathered hundreds of soldiers. ”

“ What should I do if I had not a poet’s heart to share my feelings for the children?’
We get a pretty glimpse of Alfred one Christmas time putting on little Hallam’s coatee, a present from Mrs. Cameron, needless to say.
‘Thanks, thanks, thanks,’ says Mrs. Tennyson. ‘And for my frill, as Alfred calls it, and for the big beautiful ball which charms Hallam beyond measure and delights baby too, only with so much of fear in the delight that he dare not approach the giant without having Mother’s hand in his. ”

“ During the first days of the attack, the roads were filled with refugees from the town of Verdun and the country north of it. As soon as the bombardment started, civilians were given five hours to leave, and we saw them—old men, women, and children—struggling along through the snow on their way south. It was but another of those sad migrations that occur so often in the ‘Zone des Armées.’ The journey was made difficult and often dangerous for them by the columns of skidding trucks, so the more timid took to the fields or the ditches at the roadside. ”

“ The four walls of the house were still standing, but inside there was nothing but a furnace which glowed and leapt into flame with every draught of air, so that the sparks flew over the neighbouring houses, and started other fires which the firemen were busy controlling. These pompiers are no longer civilians. The black uniform and gay brass and leather helmet of Paris fashion have been replaced with the blue-grey of the poilu, with the regulation steel shrapnel casque or bourguignotte. The French press has had many accounts of their heroism since the beginning of the attack. ”

“ Encores are rare, and the men are slow to take them. There is a man towards the end of the evening who wins one, unmistakably, with an imitation of a drunkard singing ‘Alice, where art Thou?’ The pianist fails to keep in touch with the hiccoughing vagaries of this performance, and the singer, unabashed, finishes without accompaniment. The audience yells with delight and continues to yell till the singer comes forward again. ”

“ This might have been written of Lord Hartington through many a stormy scene in the House of Commons, as he sat on the front Opposition Bench, one hand in his trouser pocket, his hat tilted over his nose, his face as stony as that of the Sphinx.
It is common experience in modern Parliaments that men who have attained the highest position at the Bar have been failures in the House of Commons. ”

“ Among the respectable poor, not only of the hand-working class, but of the lower-middle class, and this is the poorer of the two in these war days, the great trouble in life is the finding of shoes, the hopeless struggle to keep children’s feet well covered. Year by year, in every town in England, women are worried into their graves, because, let them do what they will, one pair of shoes wears out before they have the wherewithal to buy another. ”

“ The difficulties have been overcome by a herculean effort. Atkins bathes happily in its water, and watches the ships of allies and of neutrals—those lesser breeds who wait—pass us safely.
[67]
To most of the English the canal has seemed a desert track dotted with lonely gares, akin in their solitude to a Red Sea lighthouse. A further acquaintance with them has dispelled many imaginings. The gares, the friendly chefs de gare, and their brimming quivers have assumed a different aspect from their ancient one of milestones on the road to India. ”

“ Nor can a man of the one type ever understand the attraction for women of the other.
Sorell sat on impatiently in the darkening garden, hoping always that Connie would explain, would confess; for he was certain that she had somehow schemed for this preposterous reconciliation—if it was a reconciliation. She wanted, no doubt, to heal Falloden’s conscience, and so to comfort her own. And she would sacrifice [128] Otto, if need be, in the process! He vowed to himself that he would prevent it, if he could. ”

“ There were many peasant carts loaded with every imaginable article of household goods from stoves to bird cages, but no matter what else a cart might contain, there was always a mattress with the members of the family, old and young, bouncing along on top. So ubiquitous was this mattress that I asked about it, and was told that the French peasant considers it the most important of his Lares, for it is there his babies are born and his old people die—there too, is the family bank, the hiding-place for the bas de laine. ”