He shrugged and replied rather disconsolately: “My dear lady, the whole affair is too far beyond my comprehension for me to form any opinion about it. Civilization has been dealt a blow that leaves feeble intellects, like mine, too dazed to think!” “But do you think England will come in?” persisted his questioner. “She may and she may not,” was the unsatisfactory reply. “I fail to see what she can accomplish, in her present condition, if she does.” “Oh, she could be of great use!” exclaimed the banker’s wife. “She could patrol us across the briny deep, and that is all I care about at present! Dear me! if only our cars had not been requisitioned, we might all have been on the sea by now! I do think it rather an imposition to take what belongs to neutrals!” “They probably never asked to whom the cars belonged,” returned the man. “At a time like this, when every moment lost counts against them, every vehicle for transporting troops is too urgently needed.” “Oh, I suppose so!” the woman sighed, “but I just wish I had not left mine in Paris. They might have had it and welcome, if they had allowed me to get out first!” “I can’t understand why _one_ train for foreigners can’t be run through to Calais,” complained another. “There is no _system_—that is the trouble!” “System!” echoed the man. “How can there be system, in regard to strangers, when the country is shaken as by an earthquake? The most powerful military strength in the world, enhanced by all the devices and war-machinery perfected by half a century of study and preparation, is rushing to overwhelm her unsuspecting and unready forces! What is your discomfort, or mine, or that of any individual, when compared to the almost inevitable ruin threatening France? We can only wait and be patient. Our trials are as nothing in comparison to what every native of this country is now suffering.” This silenced complaints, and the very typical conversation took a more serious tone. Not one of us really understood the full gravity of the catastrophe. It was too sudden and inexplicable. The sentiments prevailing in Paris, at that time, were scarcely wiser than ours; save that former experience—the trials of a war still remembered by many—added the anguish of apprehension to incredulous amazement. We, meanwhile, were more annoyed than frightened, and looked on the whole matter with egoistic intolerance, angry that our plans should be disturbed by so stupid an affair as international discord! But as days passed, bringing the astounding information that Belgium was likely to be invaded,—bringing also England’s protest, followed by her entrance into the fray,—even we neutrals began to feel the far-reaching shadow of evil.