“march,” as they say across the Channel.  Pains and penalties were threatened against any newspaper which should dare to publish a word of military information beyond the official communiques issued in order to hide the truth.  Only by a careful study of maps from day to day and a microscopic reading between the lines could one grope one’s way to any kind of clear fact which would reveal something more than the vague optimism, the patriotic fervour, of those early dispatches issued from the Ministry of War.  Now and again a name would creep into these communiques which after a glance at the map would give one a cold thrill of anxiety and doubt.  Was it possible that the enemy had reached that point?  If so, then its progress was phenomenal and menacing.  But M. le Marquis de Messimy, War Minister of France, was delightfully cheerful.  He assured the nation day after day that their heroic army was making rapid progress.  He omitted to say in what direction.  He gave no details of these continual victories.  He did not publish lists of casualties.  It seemed, at first, as though the war were bloodless.

2

One picture of Paris, in those first days of August, comes to my mind now.  In a great room to the right of the steps of the War Office a number of men in civilian clothes sit in gilded chairs with a strained look of expectancy, as though awaiting some message of fate.  They have interesting faces.  My fingers itch to make a sketch of them, but only Steinlen could draw these Parisian types who seem to belong to some literary or Bohemian coterie.  What can they be doing at the Ministry of War?  They smoke cigarettes incessantly, talk in whispers tete-a-tete, or stare up at the steel casques and cuirasses on the walls, or at the great glass candelabra above their heads as though they can only keep their patience in check by gazing fixedly at some immovable object.  Among the gilded chairs and beneath the Empire mirrors which reflect the light there are three iron bedsteads with straw mattresses, and now and again a man gets up from one of these straight-backed chairs and lies at full length on one of the beds.  But a minute later he rises silently again and listens intently, nervously, to the sound of footsteps coming sharply across the polished boards.  It seems to be the coming of the messenger for whom all these men have been waiting.  They spring to their feet and crowd round a table as a gentleman comes in with a bundle of papers from which he gives a sheet to every outstretched hand.  The Parisian journalists have received the latest bulletin of war.  They read it silently, devouring with their eyes those few lines of typewritten words.  Here is the message of fate.  Those slips of paper will tell them whether it goes well or ill with France.  One of them speaks to his neighbour: 

“Tout va bien!”