Of all my experiences, of all the unforgettable memories which the war has woven with threads of fire unquenchable in my mind, of all the hours of feverish expectancy, joy, pain, anguish and glorious action, none stands out—nor ever will—more clearly in my recollection than the day when we marched out of Rheims. Nothing remains, except a confusion of disconnected memories of the days of waiting and of expectation, days nevertheless when one’s heart beat fast and loud. A bugle-call sounding the “fall-in” lifts the curtain on a new act in which, the empty years behind us, we are spurring our horses on into the eternal battle between life and death. On the thirtieth of July, 1914, I did not believe in the possibility either of war or of mobilisation—nor even of partial mobilisation—and I refused to let my thoughts dwell on it. The good folk of Rheims, excited and anxious, gathered from time to time in dense crowds outside the building of the Société Générale, on the walls of which the latest telegrams were posted up, then broke up into knots of people who discussed the situation with anxiety and even consternation. At the Lion d’Or, where I turned in for dinner on the terrace under the very shadow of the cathedral, I called for a bottle of Pommery, saying jocularly that I must just once more drink champagne; a message telephoned from a big Paris newspaper reassured me, and in the peaceful quiet of a fine summer’s night I returned to my quarters with a light heart. As I was turning into bed I caught a glimpse through the barrack window of the two Gothic towers of the cathedral, standing high above the city as if in the act of blessing and guarding it. All was quiet: the silence was only broken from time to time by the cry of the swallows as they skimmed through the clear air. War, I repeated to myself, it is foolish even to think of, and this talk of war is but the outcome of some disordered pessimistic minds; and with that I went to sleep on my hard little webbed bed ... for the last time. Towards midnight I woke with a start, as though someone had shaken me roughly. Yet all was still: the barracks were rapt in sleep. Near by me only the loud and heavy breathing of the twelve men who made up the number occupying the room could be heard, as I lay on my back, wide awake, waiting, for I now felt that the signal would surely come which should turn the barracks into a very hive of bees. Five minutes passed—perhaps ten—then a deafening bugle call which made the very walls vibrate, calling first the first squadron, growing in volume as it called the second, louder still the third, like the roar of some beast of prey as it summoned ours; then it died away as it got farther off across the barrack square where the fifth squadron was quartered. It was the call to arms. The sleepy troopers, half awake, sat up in their beds with a start—“Hulloa!—what? What is the matter?... Are we really mobilising?”