The soldiers are all jabbering away, odds and ends of Teuton witticisms, too colloquial for me to understand, interspersed with a fire of pleasantry at the expense of the peasants. They break out at intervals into snatches of song, winding up with the inevitable “Wacht am Rhein” and “Deutschland über alles.”
Although they do not march in step, “les Prussiens” advance in such close formation that each little company looks like one huge Falstaffian figure. The solidity of their Wellington boots is in good contrast to the colossal blunder of the pickelhauben, the spiky metal helmets covering their close-cropped heads.
The Kaiserliche regiment is here, dapper Hussars, regiment upon regiment of infantry, also the Brandenburgers, well-mounted, grim of feature, with their shoulder straps buttoned over to hide the Imperial crown and embroidered N. of their Colonel-Czar. Here are some of the Landwehr, too, homely, honest men who would far rather be working at their civilian tasks.
The troops greet the General as they pass him by with great bursts of “hoch” or “grüsz” rising in tempestuous outcries from myriads of dust-dried throats. They are irrepressibly gay and certain of themselves, but I think they are putting a good deal of faith in those devastating guns which went through in the silence of the night....
ARRESTED!
I hear an imperious voice say, “Come down, Fräulein.” The blue-coated attaché is standing beneath my window, backed by a guard of soldiers, not in their spiked helmets, as usual, but in their soft round caps.
Needless to say, I hasten to go down. The moment I had feared all along has come at last.
“Who are you?” he says, looking straight into my eyes as though trying to read my very soul.
“I am an Englishwoman,” I answer.
“Dasz sieht mann gerade aus” (That is self-evident), he replies sternly.