y beer shop in all of Maubeuge, and the reason for that
was this: No sooner had the Germans cleared and opened the roads back
across Belgium to their own frontiers than an enterprising tradesman of
the Rhein country, who somehow had escaped military service, loaded many
kegs of good German beer upon trucks and brought his precious cargoes
overland a hundred miles and more southward. Certainly he could not have
moved the lager caravan without the consent and aid of the Berlin war
office. For all I know to the contrary he may have been financed in
that competent quarter. That same morning I had seen a field weather
station, mounted on an automobile, standing in front of our lodging
place just off the square. It was going to the front to make and
compile meteorological reports. A general staff who provided weather
offices on wheels and printing offices on wheels--this last for the
setting up and striking off of small proclamations and orders--might
very well have bethought themselves that the soldier in the field would
be all the fitter for the job before him if stayed with the familiar
malts of the Vaterland. Believe me, I wouldn't put it past them.

Anyway, having safely reached Maubeuge, the far-seeing Rheinishman
effected a working understanding with a native publican, which was
probably a good thing for both, seeing that one had a stock of goods and
a ready-made trade but no place to set up business, and that the other
owned a shop, but had lost his trade and his stock-in-trade likewise.
These two, the little, affable German and the tall, grave Frenchman,
stood now behind their counter drawing off mugs of Pilsener as fast as
their four hands could move. Their patrons, their most vocal and
boisterous patrons, were a company of musketeers who had marched in from
the north that afternoon. As a rule the new levies went down into
France on troop trains, but this company was part of a draft which for
some reason came afoot.

Without exception they were young men, husky and hearty and inspired
with a beefish joviality at having found a place where they could ease
their feet, and rest their legs, and slake their week-old thirst upon
their own soothing brews. Being German they expressed their
gratefulness in song. We had difficulty getting into the place, so
completely was it filled. Men sat in the window ledges, and in the few
chairs that were available, and even in the fireplace, and on the ends
of the bar, clunki