The golden days of the war correspondents have long since passed away; the unlimited freedom allowed to newspaper correspondents during the 1870 war, the fact that Germany could know every move, every change of front, even the exact figures of the different contingents of troops, by the simple method of getting the Paris papers, and the many instances during both the Spanish-American and Russo-Japanese Wars, in which supposed war correspondents turned out to be dangerous spies, have made the commanders of the fighting armies extremely careful; and the war correspondent is kept so far from the firing-line that even if he manages to get near to the front, he is allowed to see practically nothing, and his report is based only on what he can get out of soldiers back from the line of fire.

Moreover, the enormously wide front of the modern battlefield makes it absolutely impossible for the war correspondent to gain anything like an exact idea of what is going on. His work is essentially a work of analysis, analysis of the section in which he moves, but the synthesis of the whole movement is bound to escape his observation.

But though war is undoubtedly decided on the battlefield, it is no less certainly reflected in the life of the capitals of the belligerent nations. As long as hope, money, food, fresh supplies of men and ammunition are forthcoming, a nation retains a normal appearance; but a reverse on the battlefield is almost immediately transmitted throughout the country. Especially in the large towns, where bad news always manages to come through quickly, one can detect, from a thousand and one signs, to what degree the population has been affected.

We have only to remember how London and Paris looked in September last, and to compare the practically "Business as usual" life of to-day, to appreciate what a sensitive thermometer is the population of a great city.

The task I have essayed during the last five months has been to look at these thermometers with the eye of a doctor—sometimes anxious, sometimes unsympathetic, but always, I trust, impartial. The great capitals of Europe have been the aim of my journeys.

Upon my desk lies a cheap war-map cut from a daily paper. It is scribbled all over with blue pencil marks—marks which represent my wanderings across Europe since the beginning of the war. The atlas I have just consulted tells me I have travelled fifteen thousand miles; fifteen thousand miles of travel, during which time I met continuously new people, people of different temperaments, different nationalities, different religions; but all interested in one subject, and talking about one subject only—the war.

I have visited eight large capitals of European States, lived their lives, felt the intense wave of their sympathies, hates, sorrows, and joys, strong, of course, in a terrible crisis like the present.

From London to Paris, from Berlin to Amsterdam, from Vienna to Brussels, from Rome to Athens and Constantinople, all the European capitals show more or less the effects of the war. Curiously enough, Rome, Amsterdam, and Athens—capitals of States as yet neutral—are among the cities most altered, while least changes are to be seen in the town which has given to the war almost the whole of her adult sons—Berlin.

When one wishes to obtain, during a short visit, as true and as many impressions as possible of a town, the best thing to do is to sit in a cafÉ where the literary-journalistic element resorts. In the large room of the CafÉ Royal in London, or under the deer-heads of the Bauer in Berlin, on the horrid yellow velvet sofas of Aragno in Rome, or on the verandah of the Ianni in Constantinople, the people talk freely. In such places the opinions of the different classes are reduced to a common denomination—public opinion; tongues wag more freely, loosened by the favourite drink, be it whisky and soda, beer, coffee, or sherbet.

London is decidedly optimistic; there is certainly a little apprehension on the score of Zeppelins, and the probability of a lengthy war; but every Briton knows that England will ultimately come out on top.

Amsterdam is, at the present moment, the town of half words and of compromises of all kinds. "We want to please England, our friends, but we wish to avoid trouble with Germany ..." is a sentence one often hears there.

Paris has given all that she had—her children, her money, and her commerce. She is waiting and hoping, for the memories of 1870 are still fresh.

But Berlin—Berlin is full of astonishment. She was certain that the war would be over and Paris taken in less than a month. She does not yet admit that the campaign is going badly, but she is very much surprised that her carefully prepared military machine has not worked perfectly.

Rome watches the war with almost morbid interest, as a woman of Madrid watches a bull-fight. She is aching to do something; she wants to follow the call of her strong sympathies, of her still stronger hates, and to break off the neutrality her diplomats have imposed upon her. Everywhere a word of hope is repeated, full of promise and of menace—"To Trieste, soon!"

Athens is waking to something of her old spirit now heroic times have come again. She is confident in her clever diplomats, and already regards Southern Albania as an essential part of Greece.

Vienna has long since begun to feel the grip of famine, defeat, and, what is worse, political dissolution. With her shops closed, her darkness, her beggars with the real accent of hunger in their tones, the town is even more sad than Brussels, that capital which is no longer a capital, that beautiful city which had to shelter in her best palaces all the bureaucrats and military cohorts of the invaders, but which still has ideals and a beloved king, and looks full of hope at her sons and her friends fighting in the near west. Brussels waits the day of resurrection.

As for Constantinople, the town is displaying truly Oriental fatalism. "The Germans took the trouble to give us money, to organise our army, to augment our navy, and we hope that everything goes well. If not—the sky will be blue all the same, the figs will ripen at the right season as they did before, the world will not have changed."

Thus might speak the Turk if he troubled himself to speak at all: but he is silent. All the talking there is done by the Germans.

A curiosity of the war is the way the street crowds have altered in composition in the different capitals.

In London there are the refugees, dressed in clothes of all shapes, colours, and dimensions, the special constables, and the crowds of recruits. In Paris—patriotic Paris—one meets many crippled people, for almost every other man not wearing a uniform has a physical deformity. In the Paris underground, at the Metropolitan Railway Station, a new figure, a sympathetic and admirable figure, has appeared: the woman who works while her husband is at the front. Often she has babies clinging to her skirt as she pierces your railway ticket.

Brussels is overrun by German uniforms; Vienna by refugees from Galicia; Rome by continuous pro-war demonstrations; Constantinople by any amount of Germans, and also by a curious class of Turco-German official who is, for the moment, the real master of the situation.

My journeys will be found in this book in their chronological order, but before I start the record of my war-time travels I should like to set down a conversation I had at Craig-Avon, near Belfast, in April, 1914.

One of the officers of the Ulster Army had just taken me round the camp and shown me everything: the new uniforms, the guns, the commissariat and sanitary arrangements, the men at drill and at play.

We were sitting in the lofty winter-garden of Craig-Avon, and beside our charming host—Captain Craig—Sir Edward Carson, the Archbishop of Belfast, and a few officers of H.M.S. Pathfinder, which was anchored off Carrickfergus, were present.

We talked about the situation, and about the organisation of the new troops, and I remember asking Sir Edward Carson the question, "Do you think all this preparation indispensable? Do you think there will ever be any actual fighting?"

"There will be, if we cannot obtain what we want without fighting," came the answer. "In any case, we are training here some jolly good troops, and it is always better for a nation to have trained than untrained men. England will know where to find a few thousand good soldiers in case of need," he concluded smiling.

Then a young officer, wearing the blue naval uniform, said in a light voice, probably for the sake of saying something, "And she will probably need them sooner than any of us think."

The old tradition that the gift of prophecy brings misfortune to the prophet, as it did to the unfortunate Cassandra, has been fulfilled. The young officer went down with his ship, the Pathfinder, without the consolation even of having fought for his country.