down the Connemaugh Valley and destroyed Johnstown. As a
correspondent I have seen all the great armies and the military
processions at the coronations in Russia, England, and Spain, and
our own inaugural parades down Pennsylvania Avenue, but those
armies and processions were made up of men. This was a machine,
endless, tireless, with the delicate organization of a watch and the
brute power of a steam roller. And for three days and three nights
through Brussels it roared and rumbled, a cataract of molten lead.
The infantry marched singing, with their iron-shod boots beating out
the time. They sang "Fatherland, My Fatherland." Between each line
of song they took three steps. At times two thousand men were
singing together in absolute rhythm and beat. It was like the blows
from giant pile-drivers. When the melody gave way the silence was
broken only by the stamp of iron-shod boots, and then again the song
rose. When the singing ceased the bands played marches. They
were followed by the rumble of the howitzers, the creaking of wheels
and of chains clanking against the cobblestones, and the sharp, bell-
like voices of the bugles.

More Uhlans followed, the hoofs of their magnificent horses ringing
like thousands of steel hammers breaking stones in a road; and after
them the giant siege-guns rumbling, growling, the mitrailleuse with
drag-chains ringing, the field-pieces with creaking axles, complaining
brakes, the grinding of the steel-rimmed wheels against the stones
echoing and re-echoing from the house front. When at night for an
instant the machine halted, the silence awoke you, as at sea you
wake when the screw stops.

For three days and three nights the column of gray, with hundreds of
thousands of bayonets and hundreds of thousands of lances, with