Monsieur Segotin's Story
and the machine-guns be set to work to clear the streets of a riotous assemblage.
"And now, lest we should seek comfort for our earthly miseries by taking a glance heavenwards now and then; lest we should turn our eyes from the sad spectacle of our poor little hushed town, and the wearers of spiked helmets who swaggered about in it, to solace them with a glimpse of God's beautiful sky and the assurance that the sun was still alight in it; behold! another plague of posters to inform us that it would be very imprudent for us, even out of simple curiosity, to follow too attentively the manœuvres of aircraft that might happen to fly over our heads. The most severe penalties were promised us should we attempt to make signals to the aeroplanes of those who were endeavouring to rescue us. It is, of course, always possible that somebody in Saint Hilaire might have waved encouragement to a French or a British aeroplane, had it appeared and had anybody in the town at that time known how to distinguish it from a German one; but such a natural movement might surely have been punishable by something less than the most severe penalties, death, for example. And it was clear from that poster that any glance skywards, even to see what weather was promised, might be rewarded by a shot from a sentry. Yet the chances against an aeroplane hostile to our masters arriving over Saint Hilaire were, at that time, enormous. However, so it was. Picture us, then, moving about in the prosecution of our 'absolutely necessary
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