e miles an
hour. There were long stops at every station, while unshaven Landsturm
men on guard scanned the car windows in search of spies by the light of
their electric flash lamps. After many hours somebody said we were now
in Belgium.

There are no longer any bothersome customs formalities at the Belgian
border, but the ghost of a house that had been knocked into a cocked hat
by a shell indicated that we were in the land of the enemy. Houses that
looked as if they had been struck by a Western cyclone now became more
numerous. A village church steeple had a jagged hole clean through it.
After more hours somebody else said we were in France. Every bridge,
culvert, and crossroad was guarded by heavily bearded Landsturm men, who
all looked alike in their funny, antiquated, high black leather
helmets--usually in twos--the countryside dotted with cheery little
watch fires.

In the little French villages all lights were out in the houses. The
streets were barred like railroad crossings except that the poles were
painted in red-white-black stripes, a lantern hanging from the middle of
the barrier to keep the many army automobiles that passed in the night
from running amuck.

Sedan, a beehive of activity, was reached at daybreak. Here most of the
military, plus the Field Chaplains, got out. From here on daylight
showed the picturesque ruin the French themselves had wrought--the
frequent tangled wreckage of dynamited steel railway bridges sticking
out of the waters of the river, piles of shattered masonry damming the
current, here and there half an arch still standing of a once beautiful
stone footbridge. I was told that over two hundred bridges had been
blown up by the retreating French in their hopeless attempt to delay the
German advance in this part of France alone.

Several hours more of creeping over improvised wooden bridges and
restored roadbeds brought the post train to the French city that had
20,000 inhabitants before the war which the Kaiser and the Great
Headquarters now occupy.

Wooden signs printed in black letters, "Verboten," (forbidden,) now
ornament the pretty little park, with its fountain still playing,
outside the railroad station. The paths are guarded by picked
grenadiers, not Landsturm men this time, while an officer of the guard
makes his ceaseless rounds. Opposite the railroad station, on the other
side of the little park, is an unpretentious villa of red brick and
terra cotta trimmings, but tw