And there was
another city whose population seemed to be all soldiers in
training; and yet another given up to big guns and ammunition
--an extraordinary sight.
After that, we came to a little town of pale stone which an
Army had made its headquarters. It looked like a plain woman
who had fainted in public. It had rejoiced in many public
institutions that were turned into hospitals and offices; the
wounded limped its wide, dusty streets, detachments of
Infantry went through it swiftly; and utterly bored
motor-lorries cruised up and down roaring, I suppose, for
something to look at or to talk to. In the centre of it I found
one Janny, or rather his marble bust, brooding over a minute
iron-railed garden of half-dried asters opposite a shut-up
school, which it appeared from the inscription Janny had founded
somewhere in the arid Thirties. It was precisely the sort of
school that Janny, by the look of him, would have invented. Not
even French adaptability could make anything of it. So Janny
had his school, with a faint perfume of varnish, all to himself
in a hot stillness of used-up air and little whirls of dust.
And because that town seemed so barren, I met there a French
General whom I would have gone very far to have encountered.
He, like the others, had created and tempered an army for
certain work in a certain place, and its hand had been heavy on
the Boche.
Pages:
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49