wake up that will sometimes occur at a deep crisis. My memory of this
tour I have just made is full of puzzled-looking men. I have seen
thousands of _poilus_ sitting about in cafes, by the roadside, in
tents, in trenches, thoughtful. I have seen Alpini sitting restfully and
staring with speculative eyes across the mountain gulfs towards unseen
and unaccountable enemies. I have seen trainloads of wounded staring
out of the ambulance train windows as we passed. I have seen these dim
intimations of questioning reflection in the strangest juxtapositions;
in Malagasy soldiers resting for a spell among the big shells they were
hoisting into trucks for the front, in a couple of khaki-clad Maoris
sitting upon the step of a horse-van in Amiens station. It is always the
same expression one catches, rather weary, rather sullen, inturned. The
shoulders droop. The very outline is a note of interrogation. They look
up as the privileged tourist of the front, in the big automobile or
the reserved compartment, with his officer or so in charge,
passes--importantly. One meets a pair of eyes that seems to say:
"Perhaps _you_ understand....

"In which case---...?"

It is a part, I think, of this disposition to investigate what makes
everyone collect "specimens" of the war. Everywhere the souvenir forces
itself upon the attention. The homecoming permissionaire brings with
him invariably a considerable weight of broken objects, bits of shell,
cartridge clips, helmets; it is a peripatetic museum. It is as if he
hoped for a clue. It is almost impossible, I have found, to escape these
pieces in evidence. I am the least collecting of men, but I have brought
home Italian cartridges, Austrian cartridges, the fuse of an Austrian
shell, a broken Italian bayonet, and a note that is worth half a franc
within the confines of Amiens. But a large heavy piece of exploded shell