ers of my two hands; and
flags, except on rare show-off occasions, do not float above the heads
of the columns; and officers dress as nearly as possible like common
soldiers; and the courier's work is done with much less glamour but with
in-, finitely greater dispatch and certainty by the telephone, and by
the aeroplane man, and most of all by the air currents of the wireless
equipment. We missed the gallant courier, but then the wireless was
worth seeing too.

It stood in a trampled turnip field not very far beyond the ruined Porte
St. Martin at the end of the Rue St. Martin, and before we came to it we
passed the Monument des Instituteurs, erected in 1899--as the
inscription upon it told us--by a grateful populace to the memory of
three school teachers of Laon who, for having raised a revolt of
students and civilians against the invader in the Franco-Prussian War,
were taken and bound and shot against a wall, in accordance with the
system of dealing with ununiformed enemies which the Germans developed
hereabouts in 1870 and perfected hereabouts in 1914. A faded wreath,
which evidently was weeks old, lay at the bronze feet of the three
figures. But the institute behind the monument was an institute no
longer. It had become, over night as it were, a lazaret for the
wounded. Above its doors the Red Cross flag and the German flag were
crossed--emblems of present uses and present proprietorship. Also many
convalescent German soldiers sunned themselves upon the railing about
the statue. They seemed entirely at home. When the Germans take a town
they mark it with their own mark, as cattlemen in Texas used to mark a
captured maverick; after which to all intents it becomes German. We
halted a moment here.

"That's French enough for you," said the young officer who was riding
with us, turning in his seat to speak--"putting up a monument to glorify
three francs-tireurs. In Germany the people would not be allowed to do
such a thing. But it is not humanly conceivable that they would have
such a wish. We revere soldiers who die for the Fatherland, not men who
refuse to enlist when the call comes and yet take up arms to make a
guerrilla warfare."

Which remark, considering the circumstances and other things, was
sufficiently typical for all purposes, as I thought at the time and
still think. You see I had come to the place where I could understand a
German soldier's national and racial point of view, though I doubt h