use, so I travelled along this on my
way back. But it was unimpressive. The drop from the rolling uplands
about the camp of Elsenborn down to Malmedy gave rise to very steep
gradients on the German side, and the single line of rail was so
dilapidated and was so badly laid that, as we ran down with steam off,
it hardly seemed safe for a short train of about half-a-dozen coaches.
That the Great General Staff had no intention of making this a main
line of advance appeared to be pretty clear. They meant the hosts that
they would dispose of when the moment came, to sweep round by
communications lying farther to the north, starting from about
Aix-la-Chapelle and heading for the gap south of the Dutch enclave
about Maestricht. The impression acquired during this flying visit was
that for all practical purposes the Germans had everything ready for
an immediate invasion of Belgium and Luxemburg when the crisis
arrived, that they were simply awaiting the fall of the flag, that
when war came they meant to make their main advance through Belgium,
going wide, and that _pickelhaubes_ would be as the sands of the sea
for number well beyond Liege within a very few days of the outbreak of
hostilities. On getting home I compared notes with the Intelligence
Section of the General Staff which was especially interested in these
territories, but found little to tell them that they did not know
already except with regard to a few very recently completed railway
constructions. The General Staff hugged no illusions. They were not so
silly as to suppose that the Teuton proposed to respect treaties in
the event of the upheaval that was sure to come ere long.

Having a house at Fleet that summer, I cycled over to beyond Camberley
one day, just at the stage when coming events were beginning to cast
their shadows before after the Serajevo assassinations, to watch the
Aldershot Command at work, and talked long with many members of the
Command and with some of the Staff College personnel who had turned
out to see the show. Some of them--_e.g._ Lieut.-Colonels W. Thwaites
and J. T. Burnett-Stuart and Major (or was it Captain?) W. E.
Ironside--were to go far within the next five years. But there were
also others whom I met that day for the last time--Brigadier-General
Neil Findlay, commanding the artillery, who had been in the same room
with me at the "Shop," and Lieut.-Colonel Adrian Grant-Duff of the
Black Watch, excusing his presence in the firing-li