utilating and torturing at
will--I saw nothing. I knew of these tales only from having read them
in the dispatches sent from the Continent to England, and from there
cabled to American papers.

Even so, I hold no brief for the Germans; or for the reasons that
inspired them in waging this war; or for the fashion after which they
have waged it. I am only trying to tell what I saw with my own eyes and
heard with my own ears.

Be all that as it may, we straggled into Beaumont--five of us--on the
evening of the third day out from Brussels, without baggage or
equipment, barring only what we wore on our several tired and drooping
backs. As in the case of our other trip, a simple sight-seeing ride had
resolved itself into an expeditionary campaign; and so there we were,
bearing, as proof of our good faith and professional intentions, only
our American passports, our passes issued by General von Jarotzky, at
Brussels, and--most potent of all for winning confidence from the casual
eye--a little frayed silk American flag, with a hole burned in it by a
careless cigar butt, which was knotted to the front rail of our creaking
dogcart.

Immediately after passing the ruined and deserted village of Montignies
St. Christophe, we came at dusk to a place where a company of German
infantrymen were in camp about a big graystone farmhouse. They were
cooking supper over big trench fires and, as usual, they were singing.
The light shone up into the faces of the cooks, bringing out in ruddy
relief their florid skins and yellow beards. A yearling bull calf was
tied to a supply-wagon wheel, bellowing his indignation. I imagine he
quit bellowing shortly thereafter.

An officer came to the edge of the road and, peering sharply at us over
a broken hedge, made as if to stop us; then changed his mind and
permitted us to go unchallenged. Entering the town, we proceeded,
winding our way among pack trains and stalled motor trucks, to the town
square. Our little cavalcade halted to the accompaniment of good-
natured titterings from many officers in front of the town house of the
Prince de Caraman-Chimay.

By a few Americans the prince is remembered as having been the cousin of
one of the husbands of the much-married Clara Ward, of Detroit; but at
this moment, though absent, he had particularly endeared himself to the
Germans through the circumstance of his having left behind, in his wine
cellars, twenty thousand bottles of rare vintages. Wine,