covering, they
clattered past the reviewing officers, each right leg coming down with
the thumping goose-step salute, until halls and barracks echoed with the
staccato tread of thousands of hob-nailed boots. The lusty military
band blazoned out "Die Wacht am Rhein" and other martial airs, until the
creepers began to run up and down your back and you felt a lump rising
in your throat. Friends, relatives, widows, mothers already in black
for other sons, and more than the usual hurrahing crowd had gathered
under the arch leading to the railway track. As the close-locked fours
went through the gate, the people broke the ranks and pounded each man
on the back, while all the time the crowd was shouting.

I asked my neighbor what they were calling.

A German friend in the group explained: "The people shout
'congratulations!'"

At that moment a Red Cross train returning with twenty carloads of
wounded stood on the siding. Scores of bandaged heads and limp arms
stuck out of the windows,--these were the slightly wounded, --and even
the half-dead figures strapped to the cots turned feebly toward the
marching troops. Most of these also waved, and those who were
physically able shouted the same words--"Bravo!" "Congratulations!"
"Bravo!!"

That is the way after many months of war that the women and children
send their men away--no regrets, no holding back. "Good luck! Good
work! You've got a chance to die for Germany!!"

Such a spirit, and with it a sincerity of purpose that could only come
from the conviction of right, is typical of the rank and file of
citizens. It cannot fail to impress the neutral stranger, though he has
traveled far in other countries at war and seen and lived with their
citizens and soldiers. One was forced to believe that the militarists
acted in conformity with the feelings of the whole people, and that this
hideous war was not merely the result of personal ambition. Except, of
course, among the soldiers the belief was most noticeable among the
lower classes. One found it among the peasants, one's neighbor in the
day coach, the artisan, the shopkeeper. You might reason with a
professor, a doctor, or perhaps an official in the Foreign Office at
Berlin. But it was not safe to try it on a sturdy peasant with three
sons on the firing line. It was like telling a man his mother is no
better than she should be.

From the Log

"Among both fighters and those left at home, there is distinctly