Chapter 7

The Grapes of Wrath


There is a corner of Rhenish Prussia that shoulders up against Holland
and drives a nudging elbow deep into the ribs of Belgium; and right
here, at the place where the three countries meet, stands Charlemagne's
ancient city of Aix-la-Chapelle, called Aachen by the Germans.

To go from the middle of Aix-la-Chapelle to the Dutch boundary takes
twenty minutes on a tram-car, and to go to the Belgian line requires an
even hour in a horse-drawn vehicle, and considerably less than that
presuming you go by automobile. So you see the toes of the town touch
two foreign frontiers; and of all German cities it is the most westerly
and, therefore, closest of all to the zone of action in the west of
Europe.

You would never guess it, however. When we landed in Aix-la-Chapelle,
coming out of the heart of the late August hostilities in Belgium, we
marveled; for, behold, here was a clean, white city that, so far as the
look of it and the feel of it went, might have been a thousand miles
from the sound of gunfire. On that Sabbath morning of our arrival an
air of everlasting peace abode with it. That same air of peace
continued to abide with it during all the days we spent here. Yet, if
you took a step to the southwest--a figurative step in seven-league
boots--you were where all hell broke loose. War is a most tremendous