Every event was hidden under the "fog of war," then a current
expression--meagre official bulletins which read like hope in their brief
lines, while the imagination might read as it chose between the lines.
The marvel was that any but troop trains should run. All night in that
third-class coach from Dieppe to Paris! Tired and preoccupied
passengers; everyone's heart heavy; everyone's soul wrenched;
everyone prepared for the worst! You cared for no other man's views;
the one thing you wanted was no bad news. France had known that
when the war came it would be to the death. From the first no
Frenchman could have had any illusions. England had not realized
yet that her fate was with the soldiers of France, or France that her
fate and all the world's was with the British fleet.

An Italian in our compartment would talk, however, and he would
keep the topic down to red trousers, and to the red trousers of a
French Territorial opposite, with an index finger when his gesticulatory
knowledge of the French language, which was excellent, came to the
rescue of his verbal knowledge, which was poor. The Frenchman
agreed that red trousers were a mistake, but pointed to the blue
covering which he had for his cap--which made it all right. The Italian
insisted on keeping to the trousers. He talked red trousers till the
Frenchman got out at his station, and then turned to me to confirm
his views on this fatal strategic and tactical error of the French. After
all, he was more pertinent than most of the military experts trying to
write on the basis of the military bulletins. It was droll to listen to
this sartorial discourse, when at least two hundred thousand men
lay dead and wounded from that day's fight on the soil of France.
Red trousers were responsible for the death of a lot of those men.

Dawn, early September dawn, on dew-moist fields, where the harvest