r Max
sent out as special constables men he trusted. Their badge of
authority was a walking-stick and a piece of paper fluttering from a
buttonhole. These, the police, and the servants and caretakers of the
houses that lined the boulevards alone were visible. At eleven
o'clock, unobserved but by this official audience, down the Boulevard
Waterloo came the advance-guard of the German army. It consisted
of three men, a captain and two privates on bicycles. Their rifles were
slung across their shoulders, they rode unwarily, with as little concern
as the members of a touring-club out for a holiday. Behind them, so
close upon each other that to cross from one sidewalk to the other
was not possible, came the Uhlans, infantry, and the guns. For two
hours I watched them, and then, bored with the monotony of it,
returned to the hotel. After an hour, from beneath my window, I still
could hear them; another hour and another went by. They still were
passing.

Boredom gave way to wonder. The thing fascinated you, against your
will, dragged you back to the sidewalk and held you there open-eyed.
No longer was it regiments of men marching, but something uncanny,
inhuman, a force of nature like a landslide, a tidal wave, or lava
sweeping down a mountain. It was not of this earth, but mysterious,
ghostlike. It carried all the mystery and menace of a fog rolling toward
you across the sea. The uniform aided this impression. In it each man
moved under a cloak of invisibility. Only after the most numerous and
severe tests at all distances, with all materials and combinations of
colors that give forth no color, could this gray have been discovered.
That it was selected to clothe and disguise the German when he
fights is typical of the General Staff, in striving for efficiency, to
leave nothing to chance, to neglect no detail.

After you have seen this service uniform under conditions entirely
opposite you are convinced that for the German soldier it is one of his
strongest weapons. Even the most expert marksman cannot hit a
target he cannot see. It is not the blue-gray of our Confederates, but
a green-gray. It is the gray of the hour just before daybreak, the gray
of unpolished steel, of mist among green trees.

I saw it first in the Grand Place in front of the Hotel de Ville. It was
impossible to tell if in that noble square there was a regiment or a
brigade. You saw only a fog that melted into the stones, blended with
the ancient house