Conclusion: The Vision of War

Abstract

Unusually heavy railway traffic is hard to conceal, especially during stifling summer nights when most people would be sleeping with their windows open. Inhabitants of the quarters of the north and south that bordered on the two ceintures, the lines that linked up the main-line stations … must have stirred uneasily in their sleep or have been awakened during les heures blanches — three or four in the morning — by the steady rumble of slow-moving trains, a noise that went on right through the night from about the 26th or the 27th… .