If you were to ask any patron of the present Continental tour for
his first impression, he would probably note the excellence of the
travelling arrangements. Tickets are free, or rather they are not
necessary. It is impossible to miss your train: the columns of them
thunder without haste and without rest from the remotest station back
at home to the ultimate railhead where their thunder dies in that of
the guns. The sea-lacunæ are obliterated by an all but unbroken bridge
of untorpedoed transports. Delays due to loss of luggage are unknown.
You may, indeed, lose your luggage, but you do not delay. There are no
tips on this journey, and it would be idle to book seats in advance.
An avoidable expense, for you will get there without them. Either with
a draft, a post of minor importance but yet of some; or with your
battalion in all the pomp and circumstance of war; or, likely enough,
in these latter days as an isolated officer reinforcement with a typed
telegram and a moving order, you will arrive. Of course there are
incidental divagations. With traffic rigidly scheduled and regulated as
it must be, an occasional traveller is to be found who has lost his way
and has perhaps accomplished ten kilometres between dawn and dusk. I
met one such, and said--
“You seem to have lost your unit?”
“Lost my unit?” he replied with intense rancour. “I have lost my
company, lost my battalion, lost my brigade, lost my division,
my corps. A little more and I shall have lost the b----y British
Expeditionary Force.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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