For days also I have been wedged up with fugitives in railway trains more dreadful than the open roads, stifling in their heat and heart-racking in their cargoes of misery. Poor women have wept hysterically clasping my hand, a stranger’s hand, for comfort in their wretchedness and weakness. Yet on the whole they have shown amazing courage, and, after their tears, have laughed at their own breakdown, and, always the children of France have been superb, so that again and again I have wondered at the gallantry with which they endured this horror. Young boys have revealed the heroic strain in them and have played the part of men in helping their mothers. And yet, when I came at last into Paris against all this tide of retreat, it seemed a needless fear that had driven these people away. PARIS THE BEAUTIFUL Then I passed long lines of beautiful little villas on the Seine side, utterly abandoned among their trees and flowers. A solitary fisherman held his line above the water as though all the world were at peace, and in a field close to the fortifications which I expected to see bursting with shells, an old peasant bent above the furrows and planted cabbages. Then, at last, I walked through the streets of Paris and found them strangely quiet and tranquil. The people I met looked perfectly calm. There were a few children playing in the gardens of Champs Elysées and under the Arc de Triomphe symbolical of the glory of France. I looked back upon the beauty of Paris all golden in the light of the setting sun, with its glinting spires and white gleaming palaces and rays of light flashing in front of the golden trophies of its monuments. Paris was still unbroken. No shell had come shattering into this city of splendor, and I thanked Heaven that for a little while the peril had passed. CHAPTER XIX FACING DEATH IN THE TRENCHES CAVE-DWELLING THE LOT OF MODERN SOLDIERS -- GERMANS HAVE LEARNED MUCH -- STANDARDIZED MODEL -- FRENCH STUDY OF GERMAN METHODS--“COMFORTS OF HOME”--BRITISH REFUGES IN NORTHERN FRANCE--“PICNICKING” IN THE OPEN AIR -- RAVAGES OF ARTILLERY FIRE -- THE COMMON ENEMY, THE WEATHER -- WHY COOKS WEAR IRON CROSSES--“PUTTING ONE OVER” ON THE RUSSIANS. “Other times, other manners” applies as accurately to the battle-field as it does elsewhere. The cavalry charge is nearly extinct, mass formation is going, hand-to-hand conflict is rarely found, and now, it appears, the old-fashioned and romantic bivouac is no more. Trench-fighting has been carried on to such an extent in France and Belgium, and Poland, that the open camp, with its rows of little tents, outposts, and sentry guard, becomes almost a forgotten picture of warfare. Doubtless the military schools of the future will make provision for special instruction in the construction of commodious caverns on the battle-field, safe, warm, and containing all the comforts of a barrack.