advance in columns was directed chiefly upon the Sambre crossings. As
Von Kluck's wide swing through Belgium covered a greater distance, Von
Buelow's army was expected to strike the Allies some twenty-four hours
earlier. Its march, therefore, was in the nature of an onrush.

But Von Buelow was now in the full tide of fighting strength--an amazing
spectacle to chance or enforced witnesses. Well may the terrified
peasants have stood hat in hand in the midst of their ruined villages.
Any door not left open was immediately broken down and the interior
searched. Here and there a soldier could be seen carrying a souvenir
from some wrecked chateau. But for the most part everyone fled from
before its path, leaving it silent and abandoned. The field gray-green
uniforms were almost invisible in cover, in a half light, or when
advancing through mist. No conceivable detail seemed to have been
overlooked. Each man carried a complete equipment down to handy trifles,
the whole weighed to the fraction of an ounce, in carefully estimated
proportions.

But this was not enough. Waiting for each column to pass were men with
buckets of drinking water, into which the soldiers dipped their aluminum
cups. Temporary field post offices were established in advance, so that
messages could be gathered in as the columns passed. Here and there were
men to offer biscuits and handfuls of prunes. In methodical,
machine-like progress came the ammunition wagons, commissariat carts,
field kitchens, teams of heavy horses attached to pontoons, traction
engines hauling enormous siege guns, motor plows for excavating
trenches, aeroplanes, carriages containing surgeons, automobiles for
the commanders, and motor busses in which staff officers could be seen
studying their maps. On some of these vehicles were chalked
Berlin-Paris. No branch of the service was absent, no serviceable part
if it overlooked--not even a complement of grave diggers. It moved
forward always at an even pace, as if on parade, with prearranged
signals passed down the line when there was any obstacle, a descent or
bend in the road.

The tramp of many thousands cast into the atmosphere clouds of fine
dust, but even those in rear marched through it as if their lungs were
made of steel. No permission was granted to open out for the circulation
of air, though it was the month of August. It is safe to assert there
was not a single straggler in Von Buelow's army. At the first sign of it
he wa