“Our troops are under splendid discipline, as you may have seen already for yourselves.  And I assure you the Germans are not a bloodthirsty or a drunken or a barbarous people; but in every army there are fools and, what is worse, in every army there are brutes.  You are strangers; and if you passed along the road to-day some of our more ignorant men, seeing that you were not natives and suspecting your motives, might harm you.  There might be some stupid, angry common soldier, some over-zealous under officer—­you understand me, do you not, gentlemen?

“So you will please remain here quietly, having nothing to do with any of our men who may seek to talk with you.  That last is important; for I may tell you that our secret-service people have already reported your presence, and they naturally are anxious to make a showing.

“At the end of one day—­perhaps two—­we shall be able, I think, to give you safe conduct back to Brussels.  And then I hope you will be able to speak a good word to the American public for our army.”

After this fashion of speaking I heard now from the lips of Major Renner what I subsequently heard fifty times from other army men, and likewise from high German civilians, of the common German attitude toward Belgium.  Often these others have used almost the same words he used.  Invariably they have sought to convey the same meaning.

For those three days we stayed on unwillingly in Louvain we were not once out of sight of German soldiers, nor by day or night out of sound of their threshing feet and their rumbling wheels.  We never looked; this way or that but we saw their gray masses blocking up the distances.  We never entered shop or house but we found Germans already there.  We never sought to turn off the main-traveled streets into a byway but our path was barred by a guard seeking to know our business.  And always, as we noted, for this duty those in command had chosen soldiers who knew a smattering of French, in order that the sentries might be able to speak with the citizens.  If we passed along a sidewalk the chances were that it would be lined thick with soldiers lying against the walls resting, or sitting on the curbs, with their shoes off, easing their feet.  If we looked into the sky our prospects for seeing a monoplane flying about were most excellent.  If we entered a square it was bound to be jammed with horses and packed baggage trains and supply wagons.  The atmosphere was laden with the ropy scents of the boiling stews and with the heavier smells of the soldiers’ unwashed bodies and their sweating horses.

Finally, to their credit be it said, we personally did not see one German, whether officer or private, who mistreated any citizen, or was offensively rude to any citizen, or who refused to pay a fair reckoning for what he bought, or who was conspicuously drunk.  The postcard venders of Louvain must have grown fat with wealth; for, next to bottled beer and butter and cheap cigars, every common soldier craved postcards above all other commodities.