Though one had already seen many German prisoners in groups and convoys, the sight of two on the road fixed the attention because of the surroundings and the contrast suggested between French and German natures.  Both were young, in the very prime of life, and both Prussian.  One was dark-complexioned, with a scrubbly beard which was the product of the war.  He marched with such rigidity that I should not have been surprised to see him break into a goose-step.  The other was of that mild, blue-eyed, tow-haired type from the Baltic provinces, with the thin, white skin which does not tan but burns.  He was frailer than the other and he was tired!  He would lag and then stiffen back his shoulders and draw in his chin and force a trifle more energy into his steps.

A typical, lively French soldier was escorting the pair.  He looked pretty tired, too, but he was getting over the ground in the natural, easy way in which man is meant to walk.  The aboriginal races, who have a genius for long distances on foot, do not march in the German fashion, which looks impressive, but lacks endurance.  By the same logic, the cowboy pony’s gait is better for thirty miles day in and day out than the gait of the high-stepping carriage horse.

You could realize the contempt which those two martial Germans had for their captor.  Four or five peasant women refugees by the roadside loosened their tongues in piercing feminine satire and upbraiding.

“You are going to Paris, after all!  This is what you get for invading our country; and you’ll get more of it!”

The little French soldier held up his hand to the women and shook his head.  He was a chivalrous fellow, with imagination enough to appreciate the feelings of an enemy who has fought hard and lost.  Such as he would fight fair and hold this war of the civilizations up to something like the standards of civilization.

The very tired German stiffened up again, as his drill sergeant had taught him, and both stared straight ahead, proud and contemptuous, as their Kaiser would wish them to do.  I should recognize the faces of those two Germans and of that little French guard if I saw them ten years hence.  In ten years, what will be the Germans’ attitude toward this war and their military lords?

It is not often that one has a senator for a guide; and I never knew a more efficient one than our statesman.  His own curiosity was the best possible aid in satisfying our own.  Having seen the compactness and simplicity of an army column at the front, we were to find that the same thing applied to high command.  A sentry and a small flag at the doorway of a village hotel:  this was the headquarters of the Sixth Army, which General Manoury had formed in haste and flung at von Kluck with a spirit which crowned his white hairs with the audacity of youth.  He was absent, but we might see something of the central direction of one hundred and fifty thousand men in the course of one