At the dressmaker's, the next morning, the tired fitters were
preparing to leave for their usual holiday. They looked pale and
anxious--decidedly, there was a new weight of apprehension in the
air. And in the rue Royale, at the corner of the Place de la
Concorde, a few people had stopped to look at a little strip of
white paper against the wall of the Ministere de la Marine. "General
mobilization" they read--and an armed nation knows what that means.
But the group about the paper was small and quiet. Passers by read
the notice and went on. There were no cheers, no gesticulations: the
dramatic sense of the race had already told them that the event was
too great to be dramatized. Like a monstrous landslide it had fallen
across the path of an orderly laborious nation, disrupting its
routine, annihilating its industries, rending families apart, and
burying under a heap of senseless ruin the patiently and painfully
wrought machinery of civilization...

That evening, in a restaurant of the rue Royale, we sat at a table
in one of the open windows, abreast with the street, and saw the
strange new crowds stream by. In an instant we were being shown what
mobilization was--a huge break in the normal flow of traffic, like
the sudden rupture of a dyke. The street was flooded by the torrent
of people sweeping past us to the various railway stations. All were
on foot, and carrying their luggage; for since dawn every cab and
taxi and motor--omnibus had disappeared. The War Office had thrown
out its drag-net and caught them all in. The crowd that passed our
window was chiefly composed of conscripts, the _mobilisables _of the
first day, who were on the way to the station accompanied by their
families and friends; but among them were little clusters of
bewildered tourists, labouring along with bags and bundles, and
watching their luggage pushed before them on hand-carts--puzzled