We were three days getting from Brussels to La Buissiere—­a distance, I suppose, of about forty-five English miles.  There were no railroads and no trams for us.  The lines were held by the Germans or had been destroyed by the Allies as they fell back.  Nor were there automobiles to be had.  Such automobiles as were not hidden had been confiscated by one side or the other.

Moreover, our journey was a constant succession of stops and starts.  Now we would be delayed for half an hour while some German officer examined the passes we carried, he meantime eying us with his suspicious squinted eyes.  Now again we would halt to listen to some native’s story of battle or reprisal on ahead.  And always there was the everlasting dim reverberation of the distant guns to draw us forward.  And always, too, there was the difficulty of securing means of transportation.

It was on Sunday afternoon, August twenty-third, when we left Brussels, intending to ride to Waterloo.  There were six of us, in two ancient open carriages designed like gravy boats and hauled by gaunt livery horses.  Though the Germans had held Brussels for four days now, life in the suburbs went on exactly as it goes on in the suburbs of a Belgian city in ordinary times.  There was nothing to suggest war or a captured city in the family parties sitting at small tables before the outlying cafes or strolling decorously under the trees that shaded every road.  Even the Red Cross flags hanging from the windows of many of the larger houses seemed for once in keeping with the peaceful picture.  Of Germans during the afternoon we saw almost none.  Thick enough in the center of the town, the gray backs showed themselves hardly at all in the environs.

At the city line a small guard lounged on benches before a wine shop.  They stood up as we drew near, but changed their minds and squatted down without challenging us to produce the safe-conduct papers that Herr General Major Thaddeus von Jarotzky, sitting in due state in the ancient Hotel de Ville, had bestowed on us an hour before.

Just before we reached Waterloo we saw in a field on the right, near the road, a small camp of German cavalry.  The big, round-topped yellow tents, sheltering twenty men each and looking like huge tortoises, stood in a line.  From the cook-wagons, modeled on the design of those carried by an American circus, came the heavy, meaty smells of stews boiling in enormous caldrons.  The men were lying or sitting on straw piles, singing German marching songs as they waited for their supper.  It was always so—­whenever and wherever we found German troops at rest they were singing, eating or drinking—­or doing all three at once.  A German said to me afterwards: 

“Why do we win?  Three things are winning for us—­good marching, good shooting and good cooking; but most of all the cooking.  When our troops stop there is always plenty of hot food for them.  We never have to fight on an empty stomach—­we Germans.”