room, appeared
pontoon trains--big steel scows on top, beams underneath, cut, numbered,
and ready to put together; trains of light farm wagons, wide at the top,
slanting toward the middle, commandeered from all over Austria-Hungary
at the beginning of the war and driven, some by soldiers, but oftener by
civilians with the yellow Austrian bands on their arms; heavy ammunition
wagons drawn by four horse; with a soldier outrider astride one of the
leaders, and from time to time columns of reserves, older men for the
most part, bound for guard duty, probably, shuffling along in loose
order. Round and through these wagon-trains, in a swirl of dust,
rumbled and swayed big motor-trucks, and once or twice, scattering
everything with a lilting "Ta-te... Ta-da" the gray motor, the flash of
scarlet, pale blue, and gold, and the bronzed, begoggled, imperial
visage of some one high in command.

Once we passed a big Austrian mortar, covered with tarpaulin, by the
side of the road, and again two big 20-centimetre guns, which had not
had time to get up to Brest-Litovsk. This is where you find the heavy
artillery nowadays, quite as likely as in a fort, on some hard highway,
where it can easily be moved and sheltered, not behind concrete, but
some innocent-looking apple-tree. Each fence corner was chalked with
letters and numbers intelligible to the drivers, who passed that way;
each bridge, down to the few boards across a ditch, had been examined by
the pioneers, rebuilt if necessary, and a neat little sign set up on it,
telling whether or not the heavy artillery could safely cross. Flowing
back toward this huge, confident, onrushing organism, the peasants--
timid, halting, weary, and dust-covered, with wagons heaped with
furniture, beds, hay for the horses, with the littlest children and
those too old to walk--were returning to the charred ruins of their
homes. They, too--like the grass--had their unconquerable strength.

The same patience and quiet courage which had struck me in Antwerp as
peculiarly Belgian, was here again in these Poles, Slovaks, and
Ruthenians, whose boys, perhaps, were fighting with the armies which had
driven the Belgians out. You would see peasant mothers with their
children hanging from their shoulders--women who had been tramping for
days, perhaps, and might have days yet to tramp before they reached the
heap of charred bricks that had once been a home. Nearly all had a cow,
sometimes pulling back on i