Their life-blood dyed its every fold."

The song ceased, and she stood still, waiting for the procession to reach
her. A group of heavy Belgian women were marching together. Suddenly,
as by a simultaneous impulse, their voices rang out in the
Internationale--the terrible Marseillaise of the workers:--

"Arise, ye prisoners of starvation!
Arise, ye wretched of the earth!"

And the refrain was taken up by hundreds of throats:--

"'Tis the final conflict,
Let each stand in his place!"

The walls of the street flung it back. On the sidewalk, pressed against
the houses, men and women heard it with white faces. But Janet was
carried on.... The scene changed, now she was gazing at a mass of human
beings hemmed in by a line of soldiers. Behind the crowd was a row of
old-fashioned brick houses, on the walls of which were patterned, by the
cold electric light, the branches of the bare elms ranged along the
sidewalk. People leaned out of the windows, like theatregoers at a play.
The light illuminated the red and white bars of the ensign, upheld by the
standard bearer of the regiment, the smaller flags flaunted by the
strikers--each side clinging hardily to the emblem of human liberty. The
light fell, too, harshly and brilliantly, on the workers in the front
rank confronting the bayonets, and these seemed strangely indifferent, as
though waiting for the flash of a photograph. A little farther on a group
of boys, hands in pockets, stared at the soldiers with bravado. From the
rear came that indescribable "booing" which those who have heard never