While I was trying to limber up my German vocabulary he passed us
along to his Ober-leutenant in the hut along the roadside. The Ober-
Ieutenant was grave. He said we must report to army headquarters
in Brussels, and that under no circumstances should we be allowed
to return within the Belgian lines. In this way began our eight days'
confinement within the lines of the German Army of the North under
General von Boehn.

Just as we had been warned repeatedly, so we discovered in reality
that to cross between two opposing lines was no joking matter. Bad
enough, particularly in the early days of the war, to a correspondent
without permission at the front. To work up from the rear (if you had
permission) was at least according to the rules of the game. But to
cross between hostile armies--that was the one forbidden act. The
fact that we were with an American Consul was not sufficient. Three
days later Van Hee was allowed to return, but the remainder of the
party, that is to say, Willard Luther and myself, were given a free trip
into German territory and incidentally more than a week's chance to
study the German army from within.

Those next eight days Luther and I spent as willing and, on the whole,
decently treated captives within the lines of the German Army of the
North, talking freely with cultivated officers and grimy men of the
ranks, and in this way learning much of the German war machine, the
opinions of the officers and the men at their command. It would be
interesting to tell how in Brussels we dodged from War Office to cafe,
from cafe to consulate, from consulate back to War Office, and later
were worried and watched and suspected; how we were shipped
back across the German border on a combination Red Cross and