w Jersey,
and educated at Princeton; and at this moment I am a member of the New
York Cotton Exchange."

Right after this three Belgian peasants, all half-grown boys, were
brought in. They had run away from their homes at the coming of the
Germans, and for three days had been hiding in thickets, without food,
until finally hunger and cold had driven them in.

All of them were in sorry case and one was in collapse. He trembled so
his whole body shook like jelly. The landlady gave him some brandy, but
the burning stuff choked his throat until it closed and the brandy ran
out of his quivering blue lips and spilled on his chin. Seeing this, a
husky German private, who looked as though in private life he might be a
piano mover, brought out of his blanket roll a bottle of white wine and,
holding the scared, exhausted lad against his chest, ministered to him
with all gentleness, and gave him sips of the wine. In the line of duty
I suppose he would have shot that boy with the same cheerful readiness.

Just as we were filing out into the dark, Sergeant Rosenthal, who was
also going along, halted us and reminded us all and severally that we
were not prisoners, but still guests; and that, though we were to march
with the prisoners to the station, we were to go in line with the
guards; and if any prisoner sought to escape it was hoped that we would
aid in recapturing the runaway. So we promised him, each on his word of
honor, that we would do this; and he insisted that we should shake hands
with him as a pledge and as a token of mutual confidence, which we
accordingly did. Altogether it was quite an impressive little
ceremonial--and rather dramatic, I imagine.

As he left us, however, he was heard, speaking in German, to say sotto
voce to one of the guards:

"If one of those journalists tries to slip away don't take any chances--
shoot him at once!"

It is so easy to keep one's honor intact when you have moral support in
the shape of an earnest-minded German soldier, with a gun, stepping
along six feet behind you. My honor was never safer.

Chapter 6

With the German Wrecking Crew

When we came out of the little taverne at Beaumont, to start--as we
fondly supposed--for Brussels, it was pitch dark in the square of the
forlorn little town. With us the polite and pleasant fiction that we
were guests of the German authorities had already worn seedy, not to say
threadbare, but Lieutenant Mittendorfer persiste