none the less warlike.

But all this emotion was the fickle emotion of minds without established
ideas; it was with most of them, Barnet says, as it was with himself,
a natural response to collective movement, and to martial sounds and
colours, and the exhilarating challenge of vague dangers. And people had
been so long oppressed by the threat of and preparation for war that its
arrival came with an effect of positive relief.

Section 2

The plan of campaign of the Allies assigned the defence of the lower
Meuse to the English, and the troop-trains were run direct from the
various British depots to the points in the Ardennes where they were
intended to entrench themselves.

Most of the documents bearing upon the campaign were destroyed during
the war, from the first the scheme of the Allies seems to have been
confused, but it is highly probable that the formation of an aerial
park in this region, from which attacks could be made upon the vast
industrial plant of the lower Rhine, and a flanking raid through Holland
upon the German naval establishments at the mouth of the Elbe, were
integral parts of the original project. Nothing of this was known to
such pawns in the game as Barnet and his company, whose business it
was to do what they were told by the mysterious intelligences at the
direction of things in Paris, to which city the Whitehall staff had
also been transferred. From first to last these directing intelligences
remained mysterious to the body of the army, veiled under the name of
'Orders.' There was no Napoleon, no Caesar to embody enthusiasm. Barnet
says, 'We talked of Them. THEY are sending us up into Luxembourg. THEY