Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/193

seeing a drop of moisture in the other's oblique eyes, he went on hurriedly: "Now, as to that gas—that new one Kreutzer is driveling about—with some unearthly, jaw-breaking Greek name and that fine, juicy stink to it—do you remember how—" And a moment later they were deep once more in the discussion of poison gases.

July swooned into August and, overnight, it seemed, the idyl of peace was spattered out by a brushful of blood. Excitement struck Berlin like a crested wave. People cheered. People laughed. People wept. A conjurer's wand swung from Spandau to Köpenick, thence east to Posen, and north and northwest in a semicircle, touching Kiel, Hamburg, Cologne, and Mayence. A forest of flags sprang up. Soldiers marched in never-ending coils down the streets, horse and foot, foot again, and the low, dramatic rumbling of the guns. They crowded the railway stations from Lehrter Bahnhof to Friedrichstrasse Bahnhof. They entrained, cheered, were cheered, leaned from carriage windows, floppy, unstarched fatigue caps set jauntily on close-cropped heads, singing sentimental songs:

The cars pulled away, bearing crudely chalked leg ends on their brown sides—"This car for Paris!" "This car for Brussels!" "This car for Calais!"—and, twenty-four hours later, the world was startled from stupid, fattening sleep through the news that Belgium had been invaded by the gray-green hordes, led by generals who had figured out each chance of victory and achievement with logarithmic, infallible