Monsieur Segotin's Story
our streets. Not one but announced a German or an Austrian victory. Had we believed, we must have lost heart; but we believed nothing. It was a settled policy with us. We saw through the trick at once, and the report of a German success had only to be posted up for us to discredit it and to tell ourselves that things were going badly for them. And of course the real news leaked through somehow, for all their precautions. News like that of the Marne is carried by the wind, by the birds, by the thoughts of men. It cannot be kept out. We knew, we knew that they had been turned; turned, dear God, almost before the ink was dry upon their posters that announced the rout of France and the partial investment of Paris. But there is something, Monsieur, almost admirable in the hardihood of people who can behave in such a way. Think of it. Their whole plan in ruins; the quick victory on which they had absolutely counted for success lost; themselves condemned to a stalemate at the best and a war of years to a certainty. And yet they could announce to us that their enemies were being chased before them to the sea. With their own people such conduct was intelligible. Their own people, being convinced of the irresistible might of Germany, would swallow any tale. But to expect us, us, to believe! It was lunacy. Yet the posters followed one another regularly, and always the Germans were winning and always France and England and Russia were fleeing in disorder. And we had only to glance at their Colonel's face to read
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