The church spires
haven't been knocked down; they stand up tall and stately. The
roadsides aren't littered with empty shell-cases and dead horses. The
fields are absolutely fields, with green crops, all wavy, like hair
growing. After the tonsured filth we've been accustomed to call a
world, all this strikes one as unnatural and extraordinary. There's a
sweet fragrance over everything and one's throat feels lumpy. Perhaps
it isn't good for people's health to have lumpy throats, and that's
why they don't run glass trains to London.
Then, after such excited waiting, you feel that the engine is slowing
down. There's a hollow rumbling; you're crossing the dear old wrinkled
Thames. If you looked out you'd see the dome of St. Paul's like a
bubble on the sky-line and smoking chimneys sticking up like
thumbs--things quite ugly and things of surpassing beauty, all of
which you have never hoped to see again and which in dreams you have
loved. But if you could look out, you wouldn't have the time. You're
getting your things together, so you won't waste a moment when they
come to carry you out. Very probably you're secreting a souvenir or
two about your person: something you've smuggled down from the front
which will really prove to your people that you've made the
acquaintance of the Hun. As though your wounds didn't prove that
sufficiently. Men are childish.
The engine comes to a halt. You can smell the cab-stands. You're
really there.
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