"The pace has been too hot," he said. "We seem to forget that there's a limit to the strain we can put on the human machine. It's not only the physical fatigue. It's the continual output of nervous energy. All this misery, all that damn thing over there"--he waved his paw at the darkening hills beyond which was a great hostile army--"the sight of all these refugees spilt out of their cities and homes as though a great hand had tipped up the earth, is beginning to tell on us, my lads. We are spending our reserve force, and we are just about whacked!" Yet we went on, mixed up always in refugee rushes, in masses of troops moving forward to the front or backwards in retreat, getting brief glimpses of the real happenings behind the screen of secrecy, meeting the men who could tell us the hidden truth, and more than once escaping, by the nick of time only, from a death-trap into which we had tumbled unwittingly, not knowing the whereabouts of the enemy, nor his way of advance. 7 In the early days of the war, the first stampede which overwhelmed us had a touch of comedy unless one's imagination were shocked by the panic of great crowds, in which always and for whatever cause there is something degrading to the dignity of human nature. It was the panic rush of the world's tourists suddenly trapped by war in the pleasure haunts of Europe. They had come out to France, Switzerland, Italy and Egypt with well-lined purses, for the most part, and with the absolute conviction not disturbed by any shadow of doubt, that their ways would be made smooth by Cook's guides, hotel managers, British and American consuls, and foreigners of all classes eager to bow before them, to show them the sights, to carry their baggage, to lick, if need be, their boots. They had money, they belonged to the modern aristocracy of the well-to-do. Was not Europe their garden of pleasure, providing for them, in return for the price of a season ticket, old monuments, famous pictures, sunsets over Swiss mountains, historic buildings starred by Baedeker, peculiar customs of aborigines, haunts of vice to be viewed with a sense of virtue, and good hotels in which there was a tendency to over-eat? The pleasure of these rich Americans and comfortable English tourists was suddenly destroyed by the thunderbolt of war. They were startled to find that strong laws were hastily enacted against them and put in force with extraordinary brutality. Massed under the name of étrangers--they had always looked upon the natives as the only foreigners--they were ordered to leave certain countries and certain cities within twenty-four hours, otherwise they would be interned in concentration camps under armed guards for the duration of the war. But to leave these countries and cities they had to be provided with a passport--hardly an American among them had such a document-- and with a laisser-passer to be obtained from the police and countersigned by military authorities, after strict interrogation.