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'And now I was melancholy. I found something strangely sorrowful
and submissive in the sleepers all about me, those men who had
marched so far, who had left all the established texture of their
lives behind them to come upon this mad campaign, this campaign
that signified nothing and consumed everything, this mere fever
of fighting. I saw how little and feeble is the life of man, a
thing of chances, preposterously unable to find the will to
realise even the most timid of its dreams. And I wondered if
always it would be so, if man was a doomed animal who would never
to the last days of his time take hold of fate and change it to
his will. Always, it may be, he will remain kindly but jealous,
desirous but discursive, able and unwisely impulsive, until
Saturn who begot him shall devour him in his turn....
'I was roused from these thoughts by the sudden realisation of
the presence of a squadron of aeroplanes far away to the
north-east and very high. They looked like little black dashes
against the midnight blue. I remember that I looked up at them at
first rather idly--as one might notice a flight of birds. Then I
perceived that they were only the extreme wing of a great fleet
that was advancing in a long line very swiftly from the direction
of the frontier and my attention tightened.
'Directly I saw that fleet I was astonished not to have seen it
before.
'I stood up softly, undesirous of disturbing my companions, but
with my heart beating now rather more rapidly with surprise and
excitement. I strained my ears for any sound of guns along our
front. Almost instinctively I turned about for protection to the
south and west, and peered; and then I saw coming as fast and
much nearer to me, as if they had sprung out of the darkness,
three banks of aeroplanes; a group of squadrons very high, a main
body at a height perhaps of one or two thousand feet, and a
doubtful number flying low and very indistinct. The middle ones
were so thick they kept putting out groups of stars. And I
realised that after all there was to be fighting in the air.
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