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."
These husky singers were the last Germans we were to see for many hours;
for between the garrison force left behind in Brussels and the fast-
moving columns hurrying to meet the English and the French and a few
Belgians--on the morrow--a matter of many leagues now intervened.
Evidence of the passing through of the troops was plentiful enough
though. We saw it in the trampled hedges; in the empty beer bottles
that dotted the roadside ditches--empty bottles, as we had come to know,
meant Germans on ahead; in the subdued, furtive attitude of the country
folk, and, most of all, in the chalked legend, in stubby German script--
"Gute Leute!"--on nearly every wine-shop shutter or cottage door.
Soldiers quartered in such a house overnight had on leaving written this
line--"Good people!"--to indicate the peaceful character of the
dwellers therein and to commend them to the kindness of those who might
follow after.
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