ng their heels against the wooden baseboards. The
others stood in such close order they could hardly clear their elbows to
lift their glasses. The air was choky with a blended smell derived from
dust and worn boot leather and spilt essences of hops and healthy,
unwashed, sweaty bodies. On a chair in a corner stood a tall, tired and
happy youth who beat time for the singing with an empty mug and between
beats nourished himself on drafts from a filled mug which he held in his
other hand. With us was a German officer. He was a captain of reserves
and a person of considerable wealth. He shoved his way to the bar and
laid down upon its sloppy surface two gold coins and said something to a
petty officer who was directing the distribution of the refreshments.

The noncom. hammered for silence and, when he got it, announced that
the Herr Hauptmann had donated twenty marks' worth of beer, all present
being invited to cooperate in drinking it up, which they did, but first
gave three cheers for the captain and three more for his American
friends and afterward, while the replenished mugs radiated in crockery
waves from the bar to the back walls, sang for us a song which, so far
as the air was concerned, sounded amazingly like unto Every Little
Movement Has a Meaning All Its Own. Their weariness was quite fallen
away from them; they were like schoolboys on a frolic. Indeed, I think
a good many of them were schoolboys.

As we came out a private who stood in the doorway spoke to us in fair
English. He had never been in America, but he had a brother living in
East St. Louis and he wanted to know if any of us knew his brother.
This was a common experience with us. Every third German soldier we met
had a brother or a sister or somebody in America. This soldier could
not have been more than eighteen years; the down on his cheeks was like
corn silk. He told us he and his comrades were very glad to be going
forward where there would be fighting. They had had no luck yet. There
had been no fighting where they had been. I remembered afterward that
luck was the word he used.

We went back to the main street and for a distance the roar of their
volleying chorus followed us. Men and women stood at the doors of the
houses along the way. They were silent and idle. Idleness and silence
seemed always to have fallen as grim legacies upon the civilian populace
of these captured towns; but the look upon their faces as they listened