The Germans also fancy their monoplane as a bird; but they call it
Taube--a dove. To think of calling this sinister adjunct of warfare a
dove, which among modern peoples has always symbolized peace, seemed a
most terrible bit of sarcasm. As an exquisite essence of irony I saw
but one thing during our week-end in Louvain to match it, and that was a
big van requisitioned from a Cologne florist's shop to use in a baggage
train. It bore on its sides advertisements of potted plants and floral
pieces--and it was loaded to its top with spare ammunition.

Yet, on second thought, I do not believe the Prussians call their war
monoplane a dove by way of satire. The Prussians are a serious-minded
race and never more serious than when they make war, as all the world
now knows.

Three monoplanes buzzed over us, making sawmill sounds, during the next
hour or two. Thereafter, whenever we saw German troops on the march
through a country new to them we looked aloft for the thing with the
droopy wings and the black cross on its yellow abdomen. Sooner or later
it appeared, coming always out of nowhere and vanishing always into
space. We were never disappointed. It is only the man who expects the
German army to forget something needful or necessary who is
disappointed.

It was late in the afternoon when we bade farewell to the three-hundred-
pound proprietress of the Belgian Lion and sought to reach the center of
the town through byways not yet blocked off by the marching regiments.
When we were perhaps halfway to our destination we met a town bellman
and a town crier, the latter being in the uniform of a Garde Civique.
The bellringer would ply his clapper until he drew a crowd, and then the
Garde Civique would halt in an open space at the junction of two or more