" And the poem should be set to music. I
could almost hear the lilt of the verses as our car slipped through the
tangle of motor _camions_ and gun-carriages on the way thither. As for
the music, I could really hear that without flight of fancy: a deep,
rolling undertone of heavy wheels, of jolting guns, of pulsing engines,
like a million beating hearts; and out of its muffled bass rising the
lighter music of men's voices: soldiers singing; soldiers going to the
front, who shouted gaily to soldiers going to repose; soldiers laughing;
soldier-music that no hardship or suffering could subdue.
We had seen such processions before, but none so endless as this, going
both ways, as far as the eye could reach. We had seen no such tremendous
parks of artillery and aviation by the roadside, no such store of shells
for big guns and little guns, no such pyramids of grenades for trenches
and aeroplanes. We were engulfed in war, swallowed up in war. It was
thrilling beyond words.
But all the road flashed bright with thrills. There was a thrill at "le
Bois de Regrets," forest of dark regret for the Prussians of 1792, where
the French turned them back--the forest which Goethe saw: a thrill more
keen for the pointing sign, "Metz, 47 kilometres," which reminded us
that less than thirty miles separated us from the great German
stronghold, yet--"_on ne passera pas_!" And the deepest thrill of all at
the words of our guide: "_Voila la porte de Verdun! Nous y sommes_.
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