The spectacle inclined one to laugh, almost making one forget for a moment that here in this spectacle one beheld the misery of war made concrete; that in the lorn state of these poor folks its effects were focused and made vivid; that, while in some way it touched every living creature on the globe, here it touched them directly.
All the children, except the sick ones and the very young ones, walked, and most of them carried small bundles too.

I saw one little girl, who was perhaps six years old, with a heavy wooden clock in her arms.

The legs of the children wavered under them sometimes from weakness or maybe weariness, but I did not hear a single child whimper, or see a single woman who wept, or hear a single man speak above a half whisper.
They drifted on by us, silent all, except for the sound of feet and wheels; and, as I read the looks on their faces, those faces expressed no emotion except a certain numbed, resigned, bovine bewilderment.

Far back in the line we met two cripples, hobbling along side by side as though for company, and still farther back a Belgian soldier came, like a rear guard, with his gun swung over his back and his sweaty black hair hanging down in his eyes.
In an undertone he was apparently explaining something to a little bow-legged man in black, with spectacles, who trudged along in his company.

He was the lone soldier we saw among the refugees--all the others were civilians.
Only one man in all the line hailed us.