at a street corner at the same time as myself. By all criteria, the world
and his tailor had treated him well and he deserved well of the world.
We spoke together about the news. Already the new democracy
which the war has developed was in evidence. Everybody had
common thoughts and a common thing at stake, with values
reckoned in lives, and this makes for equality.

"It's clear that we have had a bad knock. Why deny it?" he said. Then
he added quietly, after a pause: "This is a personal call for me. I'm
going to enlist."

England's answer to that "bad knock" was out of her experience. She
had never won at first, but she had always won in the end; she had
won the last battle. The next day's news was worse and the next
day's still worse. The Germans seemed to be approaching Paris by
forced marches. Paris might fall--no matter! Though the French army
were shattered, one heard Englishmen say that the British would
create an army to wrest victory from defeat. The spirit of this was fine,
but one realized the enormity of the task; should the mighty German
machine crush the French machine, the Allies had lost. To say so
then was heresy, when the world was inclined to think poorly of the
French army and saw Russian numbers as irresistible.

The personal call was to Paris before the fate of Paris was to be
decided. My first crossing of the Channel had been to Ostend; the
second, farther south to Boulogne; the third was still farther south, to
Dieppe. Where next? To Havre! Events were moving with the speed
which had been foreseen with myriads of soldiers ready to be thrown
into battle by the quick march of the railroad trains.