From table to table
young girls passed jangling tiny tin milk-cans. They were supplicants,
begging money for the wounded. There were so many of them and
so often they made their rounds that, to protect you from themselves,
if you subscribed a lump sum, you were exempt and were given a
badge to prove you were immune.

Except for these signs of the times you would not have known
Belgium was at war. The spirit of the people was undaunted. Into their
daily lives the conflict had penetrated only like a burst of martial
music. Rather than depressing, it inspired them. Wherever you
ventured, you found them undismayed. And in those weeks during
which events moved so swiftly that now they seem months in the
past, we were as free as in our own "home town" to go where we
chose.

For the war correspondent those were the happy days! Like every
one else, from the proudest nobleman to the boy in wooden shoes,
we were given a laissez-passer, which gave us permission to go
anywhere; this with a passport was our only credential. Proper
credentials to accompany the army in the field had been formerly
refused me by the war officers of England, France, and Belgium. So
in Brussels each morning I chartered an automobile and without
credentials joined the first army that happened to be passing.
Sometimes you stumbled upon an escarmouche, sometimes you fled
from one, sometimes you drew blank. Over our early coffee we would
study the morning papers and, as in the glad days of racing at home,
from them try to dope out the winners. If we followed La Derniere
Heure we would go to Namur; L'Etoile was strong for Tirlemont.
Would we lose if we plunged on Wavre? Again, the favorite seemed
to be Louvain. On a straight tip from the legation the English
correspondents were going to motor to Diest. From a Belgian officer
we had been given inside information that the fight would be pulled off
at Gembloux. And, unencumbered by even a sandwich, and too wise
to carry a field-glass or a camera, each would depart upon his
separate errand, at night returning to a perfectly served dinner and a
luxurious bed. For the news-gatherers it was a game of chance. The
wisest veterans would cast their nets south and see only harvesters
in the fields, the amateurs would lose their way to the north and find
themselves facing an army corps or running a gauntlet of shell-fire. It
was like throwing a handful of coins on the table hoping that one
might rest upon the winning