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