John found his colleagues at the long low Hotel de la Poste in the Place d'Armes. There was Tompkins of the _Standard_, tall, lean, and depressed with the hopelessness of it all; and V. E. A. Stevenson, the veteran, who had seen ten wars, and hated them all. He was a cynic, a pacifist and a revolutionary. He derived grim satisfaction when ardent Belgians mistook him, with his red, weather-beaten face, trim beard and white hair, and breast blazing with war ribbons, for an English general. He suffered them to embrace him ecstatically, and sighed for his home at Hampstead,--"built out of the blood of the Boers," he explained grimly. Trevor of the _Times_ walked about morose and self-important; the heavy brow of Willing of the _Express_ was seen towering above every group of Belgian generals. He had a miraculous knowledge of the disposition of the armies, and they consulted him as a general staff. Also, genial, and an optimist to the core, Biddings of _Reuter_ walked about the lounge in carpet slippers. He refused to go out. What was the good of running about the highways and the byways? Every general and person who was somebody came to the hotel. He picked their brains--"very poor rubbish heaps"--gathered up the gossip and at tea-time had such a store that the weary, muddy colleagues were glad to barter news. He was more eloquent, despite an impediment, with the poker in his hands, when, with the cinders, he would show why the Germans could not possibly get to Paris. On the third day after John's arrival, Phipps turned up. He had been in the thick of it, at Termond and Alost. He had had no food, was nervy and on the verge of a breakdown. His eagle features were sharper than ever, and his brain wonderfully alert. His despatches had created something of a sensation in England, not only for their news, but also for the humanity, the tenderness running through his vivid epics of suffering and incredible heroism. He was in Paris when the war broke out, moved up with the French armies, had been with the British Army in its great stand at Mons, had dragged back through that dogged retreat, "a bloody terrible business, Dean--walking on torn flesh all the way,"--and had passed on into Belgium. "God--how I hate it--it's insensate, blowing all these splendid lads to atoms, for what?" he cried. "For England," said Trevor, with disapproving dignity.