The British occupation--which is marked of course by high and
impressive cordiality--is at once superficially striking and subtly
profound.
"What do you call your dog?" I asked a ragamuffin who was playing
with a nice little terrier in a village street where we ate an at fresco
meal of jam-sandwiches with a motor-car for a buffet.
He answered shyly, but with pride:
"Tommy."
The whole countryside is criss-crossed with field telegraph and
telephone wires. Still more spectacular, everywhere there are traffic
directions. And these directions are very large and very curt. "Motor-
lorries dead slow," you see in immense characters in the midst of
the foreign scene. And at all the awkward street corners in the
towns a soldier directs the traffic. Not merely in the towns, but in
many and many a rural road you come across a rival of the Strand.
For the traffic is tremendous, and it is almost all mechanical
transport. You cannot go far without encountering, not one or two,
but dozens and scores of motor-lorries, which, after the leviathan
manner of motor-lorries, occupy as much of the road as they can.
When a string of these gets mixed up with motor-cars, a few
despatch-riders on motor-cycles, a peasant's cart, and a company
on the march, the result easily surpasses Piccadilly Circus just
before the curtains are rising in West End theatres. Blocks may and
do occur at any moment.
Pages:
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89