I took the initiative with the bland inquiry, “What are you hunting for, corpses?”

“No,” they responded, pointing to their mouths and stomachs, “awful hungry.  Hunting something to eat.”

I bade a mental farewell to my food-supplies as I emptied out my pockets before these ravagers.  I expected everything to be grabbed with a summary demand for more.  From these despoilers of a countryside I was ready for any sort of a manifestation—­any, except the one that I received.  With one accord they refused to take any of my provisions.  I recovered from my surprise sufficiently to understand that they were thanking me for my good will while they were constantly reiterating: 

“It is your food and you will need every bit of it.”

In the name of camaraderie I persuaded each to take a piece of bread and chocolate.  They received this offering with profound gratitude.  With much cautioning and many solemn Auf Wiedersehens bestowed upon me, I was off again.

Below Vise an entirely new vista opened to me.  Tens of thousands of soldiers were marching over the pontoon bridges already flung across the river.  Perhaps five hundred more were engaged in building a steel bridge which seemed to be a hurried but remarkable piece of engineering.  It was replacing the old structure which had been dynamited by the Belgians, and which now lay a tangled mass of wreckage in the river.

For the next eight miles to Jupilles the country was quite as much alive as the first four miles were dead.  It was swarming with the military.  Through all the gaps in the hills above the River Meuse the German army came pouring down like an enormous tidal wave—­a tidal wave with a purpose, viz:  to fling itself against the Allies arranged in battle line at Namur, and with the overwhelming mass of numbers to smash that line to bits and sweep on resistlessly into Paris.  I thought of the Blue and Red wall of French and English down there awaiting this Gray-Green tide of Teutons.

By the hundreds of thousands they were coming; patrols of cavalry clattering along, the hoof-beats of the chargers coming with regular cadence on the hard roads; silent moving riders mounted on bicycles, their guns strapped on their backs; armored automobiles rumbling slowly on, but taking the occasional spaces which opened in the road with a hollow roaring sound and at a terrific pace; individual horsemen galloping up and down the road with their messages, and the massed regiments of dust-begrimed men marching endlessly by.

I was glad to have the spell which had been woven on me broken by strains of music from a wayside cafe, or rather the remains of a cafe, for the windows had been demolished and wreckage was strewn about the door, but the piano within had survived the ravages.  Though it was sadly out of tune, the officer, seated on a beer keg, was evoking a noise from its battered keys, and to its accompaniment some soldiers were bawling lustily: