rfer told him he had come to
invite him to dine with a mess of German officers across the way, in the
town hall.

On the way out he stopped to speak with Sergeant Rosenthal who, having
furnished the provender for the forthcoming feast, was now waiting to
share in it. Using German, the lieutenant said:

"I'm being kept pretty busy. Two citizens of this town have just been
sentenced to be shot, and I've orders to go and attend to the shooting
before it gets too dark for the firing squad to see to aim."

Rosenthal did not ask of what crime the condemned two had been
convicted.

"You had charge of another execution this morning, didn't you?" he said.

"Yes," answered the lieutenant; "a couple--man and wife. The man was
seventy-four years old and the woman was seventy-two. It was proved
against them that they put poisoned sugar in the coffee for some of our
soldiers. You heard about the case, didn't you?"

"I heard something about it," said Rosenthal.

That was all they said. After three weeks of war a tragedy like this
has become commonplace, not only to these soldiers but to us. Already
all of us, combatants and onlookers alike, have seen so many horrors
that one more produces no shock in our minds. It will take a wholesale
killing to excite us; these minor incidents no longer count with us. If
I wrote all day I do not believe I could make the meaning of war, in its
effects on the minds of those who view it at close hand, any clearer. I
shall not try.

Six-fifteen p.m. We have dined. The omelet was a very small omelet,
and two skinny pullets do not go far among nine hungry men; still, we
have dined.

My journal breaks off with this entry. It broke off because immediately
after dinner word came that our train was ready. A few minutes before
we left the taverne for the station, to start on a trip that was to last
two days instead of three hours, and land us not in Brussels, but on
German soil in Aix-la-Chapelle, two incidents happened which afterward,
in looking back on the experience, I have found most firmly clinched in
my memory: A German captain came into the place to get a drink; he
recognized me as an American and hailed me, and wanted to know my
business and whether I could give him any news from the outside world.
I remarked on the perfection of his English.

"I suppose I come by it naturally," he said. "I call myself a German,
but I was born in Nashville, Tennessee, and partly reared in Ne