The station master, a brave old type, and one or two porters had determined to stay on to the last.  “We are here,” he said, as though the Germans would have to reckon with him; but he was emphatic in his request for me to leave at once if another train could be got away, which was very uncertain.  As a matter of fact, after a bad quarter of an hour I was put on the last train to escape from this threatened town, and left it with the sound of German guns in my ears, followed by a dull explosion when the bridge behind me was blown up.

My train, in which there were only four other men, skirted the German army, and by a twist in the line almost ran into the enemy’s country, but we rushed through the night, and the engine driver laughed and put his oily hand up to salute when I stepped out to the platform of an unknown station.  “The Germans won’t get us, after all,” he said.  It was a little risky, all the same.

The station was crowded with French soldiers, and they were soon telling me their experience of the hard fighting in which they had been engaged.  They were dirty, unshaven, dusty from head to foot, scorched by the August sun, in tattered uniforms and broken boots; but they were beautiful men for all their dirt, and the laughing courage, quiet confidence, and unbragging simplicity with which they assured me that the Germans would soon be caught in a death trap and sent to their destruction filled me with admiration which I cannot express in words.  All the odds were against them; they had fought the hardest of all actions—­the retirement from the fighting line—­but they had absolute faith in the ultimate success of their allied arms.

I managed to get to Paris.  It was in the middle of the night, but extraordinary scenes were taking place.  It had become known during the day that Paris was no longer the seat of the Government, which has moved to Bordeaux.  The Parisians had had notice of four days in which to destroy their houses within the zone of fortifications, and, to add to the cold fear occasioned by this news, aeroplanes had dropped bombs upon the Gare de l’Est that afternoon.

There was a rush last night to get away from the capital, and the railway stations were great camps of fugitives, in which the richest and poorest citizens were mingled with their women and children.  But the tragedy deepened when it was heard that most of the lines to the east had been cut, and that the only line remaining open to Dieppe would probably be destroyed during the next few hours.  A great wail of grief arose from the crowds, and the misery of these people was pitiful.

Among them were groups of soldiers of many regiments.  Many of them were wounded and lay on stretchers on the floor among crying babies and weary-eyed women.  They had been beaten and were done for until the end of the war.  But, alone among the panic-stricken crowd—­panic-stricken, yet not noisy or hysterical, but very quiet and restrained for the most part—­the soldiers were cheerful, and even gay.