Well, we watched the gray ear-wig wriggling away to the westward until we were surfeited, and then we set about finding a place where we might rest our dizzy heads.  We could not get near the principal hotels.  These already were filled with high officers and ringed about with sentries; but half a mile away, on the plaza fronting the main railroad station, we finally secured accommodations—­such as they were—­at a small fourth-rate hotel.

It called itself by a gorgeous title—­it was the House of the Thousand Columns, which was as true a saying as though it had been named the House of the One Column; for it had neither one column nor a thousand, but only a small, dingy beer bar below and some ten dismal living rooms above.  Established here, we set about getting in touch with the German higher-ups, since we were likely to be mistaken for Englishmen, which would be embarrassing certainly, and might even be painful.  At the hotel next door—­for all the buildings flanking this square were hotels of a sort—­we found a group of officers.

One of them, a tall, handsome, magnetic chap, with a big, deep laugh and a most beautiful command of our own tongue, turned out to be a captain on the general staff.  It seemed to him the greatest joke in the world that four American correspondents should come looking for war in a taxicab, and should find it too.  He beat himself on his flanks in the excess of his joy, and called up half a dozen friends to hear the amazing tale; and they enjoyed it too.

He said he felt sure his adjutant would appreciate the joke; and, as incidentally his adjutant was the person in all the world we wanted most just then to see, we went with him to headquarters, which was a mile away in the local Palais de Justice—­or, as we should say in America, the courthouse.  By now it was good and dark; and as no street lamps burned we walked through a street that was like a tunnel for blackness.

The roadway was full of infantry still pressing forward to a camping place somewhere beyond the town.  We could just make out the shadowy shapes of the men, but their feet made a noise like thunderclaps, and they sang a German marching song with a splendid lilt and swing to it.

“Just listen!” said the captain proudly.  “They are always like that—­ they march all day and half the night, and never do they grow weary.  They are in fine spirits—­our men.  And we can hardly hold them back.  They will go forward—­always forward!

“In this war we have no such command as Retreat!  That word we have blotted out.  Either we shall go forward or we shall die!  We do not expect to fall back, ever.  The men know this; and if our generals would but let them they would run to Paris instead of walking there.”

I think it was not altogether through vainglory he spoke.  He was not a bombastic sort.  I think he voiced the intent of the army to which he belonged.