They were men who had not been called out because the Russians held the country, and by one of fate’s ironies, now that the enemy had been beaten and driven home, they must go out and fight.  At a little table by the side of the square sat the recruiting officer with his pen and ledger, and the village school-master, a grave, intelligent-looking young man, who must have held such a place in this half-feudal village as he would have done a hundred years ago, was doing his best to glamour over the very realistic loss of these wives and sweethearts with patriotism’s romance.  He sang and obediently they all wailed after him the old song of scattered Poland—­“Poland is not lost” “Yeszcze Polska me Zginela Poki my zygemy...”

The song stopped, there was a word of command, and the little squad started away.  The women clung to their men and cried aloud.  The children hanging to their skirts began to wail, too.  There was something creepy and horrible, like the cries of tortured animals, in that uncontrolled crying there in the bright morning sunshine.  The schoolmaster spoke to them bluntly, told them to go back to their homes and their work, and obedient, and a little quieter now, they drifted away, with aprons to their faces and their little children clinging to their skirts—­back to their cottages and the winter ahead.

This picture did not fit in very well with our rollicking military panorama, but we were soon over the hills, and half an hour later were breakfasting on pate-de-foie-gras sandwiches and champagne, with a charming old corps commandant, at a round table set outdoors in a circle of trees that must have been planted for that very purpose.  Cheered and stiffened by many bows and heel clickings and warming hospitality, we hurried off to an artillery position near the village of Olszanica.

Just under the brow of a hill we were stopped and told that it was dangerous to go farther, and we skirted off to the right under cover, to the observation station itself.  More little Swiss chalets, more hospitable officers, and out in front, across a mile of open country, the Russian trenches.  Through a periscope one could see Russians exercising their horses by riding them round the circle—­as silent and remote and of another world as a picture on a biograph screen.

“You see that clump of trees,” said the young officer, “one of their batteries is just behind there.  Those aren’t real trees, they were put there by the Russians.”  I swung the glass to the left, picked up a company of men marching.  “Hello, hello,” he whispered, then after a moment’s scrutiny:  “No—­they’re our men.”  After all, war isn’t always so different from the old days, when men had a time for fighting and a time for going in to powder their wigs!  The division commander, standing a little behind us, remarked:  “We shall fire from the right-hand battery over behind the hill and then from the left—­the one you passed near the road.”  Then turning to an officer at the field telephone he said; “You may fire now.”