or example,
one wag had inscribed on a car door: "Declarations of War Received
Here," and another had drawn a highly impressionistic likeness of his
Kaiser, and under it had inscribed "Wilhelm II, Emperor of Europe."

Presently as train after train, loaded sometimes with guns or supplies
but usually with men, clanked by, it began to dawn upon us that these
soldiers were of a different physical type from the soldiers we had seen
heretofore. They were all Germans, to be sure, but the men along the
front were younger men, hard-bitten and trained down, with the face
which we had begun to call the Teutonic fighting face, whereas these men
were older, and of a heavier port and fuller fashion of countenance.
Also some of them wore blue coats, red-trimmed, instead of the dull gray
service garb of the troops in the first invading columns. Indeed some
of them even wore a nondescript mixture of uniform and civilian garb.
They were Landwehr and Landsturm, troops of the third and fourth lines,
going now to police the roads and garrison the captured towns, and hold
the lines of communication open while the first line, who were picked
troops, and the second line, who were reservists, pressed ahead into
France.

They showed a childlike curiosity to see the prisoners in the box cars
behind us. They grinned triumphantly at the Frenchmen and the
Britishers, but the sight of a Turco in his short jacket and his dirty
white skirts invariably set them off in derisive cat-calling and
whooping. One beefy cavalryman in his forties, who looked the Bavarian
peasant all over, boarded our car to see what might be seen. He had
been drinking. He came nearer being drunk outright than any German
soldier I had seen to date. Because he heard us talking English he
insisted on regarding us as English spies.

"Hark! they betray themselves," we heard him mutter thickly to one of
his wounded countrymen in the next compartment. "They are damned
Englishers."

"Nein! Nein! All Americans," we heard the other say.

"Well, if they are Americans, why don't they talk the American language
then?" he demanded. Hearing this, I was sorry I had neglected in my
youth to learn Choctaw.

Still dubious of us, he came now and stood in the aisle, rocking
slightly on his bolster legs and eying us glassily. Eventually a
thought pierced the fog of his understanding. He hauled his saber out
of its scabbard and invited us to run our fingers along the edge and see
h