ging forth the dead was done the wagon stood loaded pretty nearly to
capacity. Four of the boxes rested crosswise upon the flat wagon-bed
and the other three were racked lengthwise on top of them. Here, too,
was a priest in his robes, and here were two altar boys who straggled,
so that as the procession started the priest was moved to break off his
chanting long enough to chide his small attendants and wave them back
into proper alignment. With the officers, the nurses and the surgeons
all marching afoot marched also three bearded civilians in frock coats,
having the air about them of village dignitaries. From their presence
in such company we deduced that one of the seven silent travelers on the
wagon must be a French soldier, or else that the Germans had seen fit to
require the attendance of local functionaries at the burial of dead
Germans.

As the cortege--I suppose you might call it that--went by where I stood
with my friends, I saw that upon the sides of the coffins names were
lettered in big, straggly black letters. I read two of the names--
Werner was one, Vogel was the other. Somehow I felt an acuter personal
interest in Vogel and Werner than in the other five whose names I could
not read.

Wherever we stopped in Belgium or in France or in Germany these
soldiers' funerals were things of daily, almost of hourly occurrence.
And in Maubeuge on this evening, even though dusk had fallen, two of the
inevitable yellow boxes, mounted upon a two-wheeled cart, were going to
the burying ground. We figured the cemetery men would fill the graves
by lantern light; and knowing something of their hours of employment we
imagined that with this job disposed of they would probably turn to and
dig graves by night, making them ready against the needs of the
following morning. The new graves always were ready. They were made in
advance, and still there were rarely enough of them, no matter how long
or how hard the diggers kept at their work. At Aix-la-Chapelle, for
example, in the principal cemetery the sexton's men dug twenty new
graves every morning. By evening there would be twenty shaped mounds of
clay where the twenty holes had been. The crop of the dead was the one
sure crop upon which embattled Europe might count. That harvest could
not fail the warring nations, however scanty other yields might be.

In the towns in occupied territory the cemeteries were the only actively
and constantly busy spots to be found,