Also, in a hedge, was a pair of new shoes, with their mouths gaping open and their latchets hanging down like tongues, as though hungering for feet to go into them.  But not a shred or scrap of German belongings—­ barring only the empty bottles—­did we see.

The marvelous German system, which is made up of a million small things to form one great, complete thing, ordained that never, either when marching or after camping, or even after fighting, should any object, however worthless, be discarded, lest it give to hostile eyes some hint as to the name of the command or the extent of its size.  These Germans we were trailing cleaned up behind themselves as carefully as New England housewives.

It may have been the German love of order and regularity that induced them even to avoid trampling the ripe grain in the fields wherever possible.  Certainly, except when dealing out punishment, they did remarkably little damage, considering their numbers, along their line of march through this lowermost strip of Belgium.

At Merbes-Ste.-Marie, a matter of six kilometers from Binche, we came on the first proof of seeming wantonness we encountered that day.  An old woman sat in a doorway of what had been a wayside wine shop, guarding the pitiable ruin of her stock and fixtures.  All about her on the floor was a litter of foul straw, muddied by many feet and stained with spilled drink.  The stench from a bloated dead cavalry horse across the road poisoned the air.  The woman said a party of private soldiers, straying back from the main column, had despoiled her, taking what they pleased of her goods and in pure vandalism destroying what they could not use.

Her shop was ruined, she said.  With a gesture of both arms, as though casting something from her, she expressed how utter and complete was her ruin.  Also she was hungry—­she and her children—­for the Germans had eaten all the food in the house and all the food in the houses of her neighbors.  We could not feed her, for we had no stock of provisions with us; but we gave her a five-franc piece and left her calling down the blessings of the saints on us in French-Flemish.

The sister village of Merbes-le-Chateau, another kilometer farther on, revealed to us all its doors and many of its windows caved in by blows of gun butts and, at the nearer end of the principal street, five houses in smoking ruins.  A group of men and women were pawing about in the wreckage, seeking salvage.  They had saved a half-charred washstand, a scorched mattress, a clock and a few articles of women’s wear; and these they had piled in a mound on the edge of the road.

At first, not knowing who we were, they stood mute, replying to questions only with shrugged shoulders and lifted eyebrows; but when we made them realize that we were Americans they changed.  All were ready enough to talk then; they crowded about us, gesticulating and interrupting one another.  From the babble we gathered that the German skirmishers, coming in the strength of one company, had found an English cavalry squad in the town.  The English had swapped a few volleys with them, then had fallen back toward the river in good order and without loss.