These people were not refugees, like the trainloads one had seen lately in Belgium and Holland. They were going to the scene of the war instead of away from it. Most of them were reservists or the wives and children of reservists, bound for their old homes near the various headquarters to which the men had been called up. Some of them were nurses of the Croix Rouge, middle-aged women and quite young girls; some were on their way to visit wounded relations. Each and all carried the same heavy burden. Not one but many of those near and dear to them were at the front. They knew in some cases that they were already among the dead or wounded or missing. But generally they knew nothing at all except that, if they were still alive, they were there somewhere on one of the many battlefields on the long line of the Allies’ front, face to face with the enemy and death. We made many friends of different conditions in life during the slow hours between dawn and midday, and all had the same story to tell. But there was no need to ask. It was written in their faces. The natural vivacity of these sorrowing women of France was gone. They talked, when they did talk, quietly and sadly, and of only one subject. More often they sat with unseeing eyes, looking far off into the darkness of the unknown future, fearful of the fate that waited for the men by their side, and appalled by the thought of the ruin and suffering that threatened their homes and their children. The tragedy that has brought sorrow to the women of half the world had come upon them with the suddenness of a bomb from a Taube, and some of them were wounded and all were stunned by its effect. That was when we were still in the dark about the result of the great battle that had begun to rage on the left wing near Paris, before the German retreat began. On the second day of our stay in Dijon there was a sudden change in the emotional atmosphere. Directly I left the hotel in the evening I felt that good news had come. Relief and happiness were in the air. In the railway station, in the streets, in the cafés, on the pavements outside the newspaper offices where the daily news of the war was posted up, the look of the people was absolutely different. For the moment personal griefs and losses were hidden and forgotten. General Joffre’s general order of September 11th had been published to the troops, and from them the news had spread so quickly that in half an hour everyone seemed to know what had happened.