enormous caldrons. The men were lying or sitting on straw piles,
singing German marching songs as they waited for their supper. It was
always so--whenever and wherever we found German troops at rest they
were singing, eating or drinking--or doing all three at once. A German
said to me afterwards:

"Why do we win? Three things are winning for us--good marching, good
shooting and good cooking; but most of all the cooking. When our troops
stop there is always plenty of hot food for them. We never have to
fight on an empty stomach--we Germans."

These husky singers were the last Germans we were to see for many hours;
for between the garrison force left behind in Brussels and the fast-
moving columns hurrying to meet the English and the French and a few
Belgians--on the morrow--a matter of many leagues now intervened.

Evidence of the passing through of the troops was plentiful enough
though. We saw it in the trampled hedges; in the empty beer bottles
that dotted the roadside ditches--empty bottles, as we had come to know,
meant Germans on ahead; in the subdued, furtive attitude of the country
folk, and, most of all, in the chalked legend, in stubby German script--
"Gute Leute!"--on nearly every wine-shop shutter or cottage door.
Soldiers quartered in such a house overnight had on leaving written this
line--"Good people!"--to indicate the peaceful character of the
dwellers therein and to commend them to the kindness of those who might
follow after.

The Lion of Waterloo, standing on its lofty green pyramid, was miles
behind us before realization came that fighting had started that day to
the southward of us. We halted at a taverne to water the horses, and