found out. We were arrested by a smart and most intelligent-looking
officer, who rode up to the side of the taxi and pointed an automatic at
us. We were innocently seated in a public cab, in a street crowded
with civilians and the passing column of soldiers, and why any one
should think he needed a gun only the German mind can explain.
Later, I found that all German officers introduced themselves and
made requests gun in hand. Whether it was because from every one
they believed themselves in danger or because they simply did not
know any better, I still am unable to decide. With no other army have
I seen an officer threaten with a pistol an unarmed civilian. Were an
American or English officer to act in such a fashion he might escape
looking like a fool, he certainly would feel like one. The four soldiers
the officer told off to guard us climbed with alacrity into our cab and
drove with us until the street grew too narrow both for their regiment
and our taxi, when they chose the regiment and disappeared. We
paid off the cabman and followed them. To reach the front there was
no other way, and the very openness with which we trailed along
beside their army, very much like small boys following a circus
procession, seemed to us to show how innocent was our intent. The
column stretched for fifty miles. Where it was going we did not know,
but, we argued, if it kept on going and we kept on with it, eventually
we must stumble upon a battle. The story that at Hal there had been
a fight was evidently untrue; and the manner in which the column was
advancing showed it was not expecting one. At noon it halted at
Brierges, and Morgan decided Brierges was out of bounds and that
the limits of our "environs" had been reached.

"If we go any farther," he argued, "the next officer who reads our
papers will order us back to Brussels under arrest, and we will lose
our laissez-passer. Along this road there is no chance of seeing