THE SEINE AT ROUEN I don't know what the Seine at Rouen is like in times of peace-trade. They say war has quadrupled its congestion. I well believe it. The pool is crammed below the Grand Pont--there's nothing above but barge traffic--with ships disgorging at a frenzied rate at the uneven cobbled quays. One can imagine the port lazing along before the War in the informal and leisurely way that is French. The French enjoy living. They are industrious enough for that. But they don't take their work hardly nor continuously. They take it in chunks. It gets done. But there is no sort of inflexible determination in their method. The Egyptians, too, have not continuity, but with them the work does _not_ get done. Both peoples work sporadically. But the Egyptian takes his chunk of work because he has to; the Frenchman because he likes it. That is the difference. The Egyptian is not industrious. The French like work, and therefore take it in tastes, never hogging it. They like to get the flavour of work. The Englishman who eats it down misses all that, and is commiserated by the French for the desecrating greed with which he attacks his task. So you can envisage the quay in peace-time: the unsystematic and picturesque dumping of merchandise in the open quays, and the hum of leisured talk; the additions to the acres of wine-barrels under the elms beyond, and the subtractions from them; and the rich fruitiness of the _bon arome_ soaking out of those casks. You get it now if you walk amongst them: walk through the shadowed wine-store on a hot day, and the odour hanging beneath the trees is a refreshment in itself. But in these days the lading and the discharge of the wine-ships is done feverishly and raucously, and too hurriedly for any attempt at arranging them on shore. The wine-ship lies there with the stuff piled monstrously on every yard of her deck, and it's being slung off as fast as may be. It's the only drink of the French soldier; there's as much urgency for its transit as for the off-loading of English supplies. Huge tanks stand as waggons on the adjoining railway and they wait to be filled, and so the _vin ordinaire_ goes up in bulk that exceeds the content of many score of barrels.