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There will be smaller crowds on
the heights of Ronheide, on the edge of the town, where the tracks enter
the long tunnel under one of the hills that etch the boundary between
Germany and Belgium.
Rain or shine, these two places are sure to be black with people, for
here they may see the trains shuttle by, like long bobbins in a loom
that never ceases from its weaving--trains going west loaded with
soldiers and naval reservists bound for the front, and trains headed
east bearing prisoners and wounded. The raw material passes one way--
that's the new troops; the finished product passes the other--the
wounded and the sick.
When wounded men go by there will be cheering, and some of the women are
sure to raise the song of Die Wacht am Rhein; and within the cars the
crippled soldiers will take up the chorus feebly. God knows how many
able-bodied soldiers already have gone west; how many maimed and
crippled ones have gone east! In the first instance the number must run
up into the second million; of the latter there must have been well
above two hundred thousand.


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