I even found myself asking, in my
innermost soul, what I had done to deserve this fortune. How had it
happened, and why, that I had come to perch on this hillside, just to
see a battle, and have it come almost to my door, to turn back and leave
me and my belongings standing here untouched, as safe as if there were
no war,--and so few miles away destruction extending to the frontier.
The sensation was uncanny. Out there in the northeast still boomed the
cannon. The smoke of the battle still rose straight in the still air. I
had seen the war. I had watched its destructive bombs. For three days
its cannon had pounded on every nerve in my body; but none of the horror
it had sowed from the eastern frontier of Belgium to within four miles
of me, had reached me except in the form of a threat. Yet out there on
the plain, almost within my sight, lay the men who had paid with their
lives--each dear to some one--to hold back the battle from Paris--and
incidentally from me. The relief had its bitterness, I can tell you. I
had been prepared to play the whole game. I had not even had the chance
to discover whether or not I could.
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