ould of course encroach upon their own resources, for
even the Hun could not utterly starve to death the captured French
civilians. The mayor told me of the joy the shipments brought and how when
the people went to draw their rations they called it "going to America."
We sat talking until far into the night before I retired to the luxury of
a real bed with clean linen sheets. There was no trouble whatever in
billeting the men--the townsmen were quarrelling as to who should have
them.

Next morning, with great regret at so soon leaving our willing hosts, we
marched off into the little Duchy of Luxemburg. We passed through the
thriving city of Esch with its great iron-mines. The streets were gay with
flags, there were almost as many Italian as French, for there is a large
Italian colony, the members of which are employed in mining and smelting.
Brass bands paraded in our honor, and we were later met by them in many of
the smaller towns. The shops seemed well filled, but the prices were very
high. The Germans seemed to have left the Luxemburgers very much to
themselves, and I have little doubt but that they would have been at least
as pleased to welcome victorious Boches had affairs taken a different
turn. Still they were glad to see us, for it meant the end of the
isolation in which they had been living and the eventual advent of
foodstuffs.

As we rode along, the countryside was lovely and the smiling fields and
hillsides made "excursions and alarums" seem remote indeed. It felt
unnatural to pass through a village with unscarred church spires and
houses all intact--such a change from battered, glorious France.

We were immediately in the wake of the German army, and taken by and large
they must have been retiring in good order, for they left little behind.
Our first night we spent at the village of Syren, eight kilometres from
the capital of the Duchy. Billeting was not so easy now, for we were
ordered to treat the inhabitants as neutrals, and when they objected we
couldn't handle the situation as we did later on in Germany. No one likes
to have soldiers or civilians quartered on him, and the Luxemburgers were
friendly to us only as a matter of policy. Fortunately, the chalk marks of
the Boche billeting officers had not been washed off the doors, and these
told us how many men had been lodged in a given house.

In my lodging I was accorded a most friendly reception, for my hostess
was French. Her nephew had come up fr