were a few precious things which they had borne away and were now
bearing back.

Soon they would know what the Germans had done to the homes.
What the Germans had done to one piano was evident. It stood in the
yard of a house where grass and flowers had been trodden by horses
and men. In the sport of victory the piano had been dragged out of
the little drawing-room, while Fritz and Hans played and sang in the
intoxication of a Paris gained, a France in submission. They did not
know what Joffre had in pickle for them. It had all gone according to
programme up to that moment. Nothing can stop us Germans!
Champagne instead of beer! Set the glass on top of the piano and
sing! Haven't we waited forty years for this day?

Captured diaries of German officers, which reflect the seventh
heaven of elation suddenly turned into grim depression, taken in
connection with what one saw on the battlefield, reconstruct the
scene around that piano. The cup to the lips; then dashed away. How
those orders to retreat must have hurt!

The state of the refugees' homes all depended upon the chances of
war. War's lightning might have hit your roof-tree and it might not. It
plays no favourites between the honest and the dishonest; the thrifty
and the shiftless. We passed villages which exhibited no signs of
destruction or of looting. German troops had marched through in the
advance and in the retreat without being billeted. A hurrying army with
another on its heels has no time for looting. Other villages had been
points of topical importance; they had been in the midst of a fight.
General Mauvaise Chance had it in for them. Shells had wrecked
some houses; others were burned. Where a German non-commissioned