ding the First Division of Artillery,
Army of the Meuse:_

"An armistice has been declared, to commence at midnight, pending
negotiations for peace. You will see that no acts of hostility
occur until you receive notice that war is to be resumed.

"VON HELMUTH,
"Imperial Commissioner for War."

The officers broke into exclamations of impatience as the general
crumpled the missive in his hand and cast it upon the floor.

"_Donnerwetter!_" he shouted. "Why were we so slow? Curse the
armistice!" He glanced at his watch. It already pointed to after
midnight. His face turned red and the veins in his forehead swelled.

"To hell with peace!" he bellowed, turning back his watch until the
minute hand pointed to five minutes to twelve. "To hell with peace, I
say! Press the button, Von Heckmann!"

But in spite of the agony of disappointment which he now acutely
experienced, Von Heckmann did not fire. Sixty years of German respect
for orders held him in a viselike grip and paralyzed his arm.

"I can't," he muttered. "I can't."

The general seemed to have gone mad. Thrusting Von Heckmann out of the
way, he threw himself into a chair at the end of the table and with a
snarl pressed the black handle of the key.

The officers gasped. Hardened as they were to the necessities of war, no
act of insubordination like the present had ever occurred within their
experience. Yet they must all uphold the general; they must all swear
that the gun was fired before midnight. The key clicked and a blue bead
snapped at the switch. They held their breaths, looking through the
window to the west.

At first the night remained still. Only the chirp of the crickets and
the fretting of the aide-de-camp's horse outside the cottage could be
heard. Then, like the grating of a coffee mill in a distant kitchen when
one is just waking out of a sound sleep, they heard the faint, smothered
whir of machinery, a sharper metallic ring of steel against steel
followed by a gigantic detonation which shook the ground upon which the
cottage stood and overthrew every glass upon the table. With a roar like
the fall of a skyscraper the first shell hurled itself into the night.
Half terrified the officers gripped their chairs, waiting for the second
discharge. The reverberation was still echoing among the hills when the
second detonation occurred, shortly followed by the third and fourth.
Then, in intervals between the crashing explosion