Six hundred passengers poured
out of the French train at noon into that neutral zone and started to
walk to Swiss safety. A blazing August sun; a road of pebbles and
stinging, upblown dust.
The passengers had been permitted to bring on the train only what
luggage they could carry; so they were laden with bags and coats,
dressing bags and jewel cases--all they had deemed most valuable. Mostly
women. German ladies fleeing for refuge; Russian ladies; English,
American; and a crowd of men, urgent to reach their armies, German,
Swiss, Russian, Austrian, Servian, Italian; withal many of the kind of
American men who go to Switzerland in August.
And the caravan started in the dust and heat of a desert. A woman let
fall her heavy bag and plodded on. Another threw away her coats. Men
shook off their bundles. The heat was stifling. And through the clouds
of dust a panic terror crept. It was the antique terror of the God
Pan--the God All; it was a fear as immense as the sky.
A woman screamed and began to run, throwing away everything she had
safeguarded so she might run with empty hands. A score followed her. Men
began to run. They thrust the women aside, cursing; and ran. And for
over two miles the road was covered thick with coats and bags, with
packages and jewel cases. The greed of possession died out in the
causeless fear.
These hoarse, pushing men, these sweating, shameless women had gone back
10,000 years into prehistoric savagery.
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