The Revolution in the Armies
through the grand, wild scenery of the Galician plains, brought us to the appointed place. There we received one of the most striking impressions of our whole trip. Our automobiles were going through a deep valley, when suddenly, at a turning, we saw, some hundreds of yards distant, the long brown ribbon of the troops massed along the two sides of the road which we were following. Amidst that mass of more than nine thousand men there flashed in the sun the brass musical instruments that were playing "La Marseillaise," and the scarlet flags. For the first time we saw an army marching under the red flag of the Internationale. This sight reminded us of our splendid workmen's processions of the past, and, indeed, if instead of these Galician hills there had been on the horizon the slag-heaps of our mining districts, we might have believed we were transported by magic in the midst of one of those crowds of demonstrating workmen that were so familiar to us before the war.
We got down from our car to shake hands with the divisional commander, Stephanovitch, who had come to meet us,
153
