s, and plum and pear
trees in the tiny grass plots alongside the more pretentious houses, and
the farm lands extend to where the town begins.

This, briefly, is La Buissiere as it looked before the war began--a
little, drowsy settlement of dull, frugal, hard-working, kindly
Belgians, minding their own affairs, prospering in their own small way,
and having no quarrel with the outside world. They lived in the only
corner of Europe that I know of where serving people decline to accept
tips for rendering small services; and in a simple, homely fashion are,
I think, the politest, the most courteous, the most accommodating human
beings on the face of the earth.

Even their misery did not make them forget their manners, as we found
when we came that way, close behind the conquerors. It was only the
refugees, fleeing from their homes or going back to them again, who were
too far spent to lift their caps in answer to our hails, and too
miserably concerned with their own ruined affairs, or else too afraid of
inquisitive strangers, to answer the questions we sometimes put to them.

We were three days getting from Brussels to La Buissiere--a distance, I
suppose, of about forty-five English miles. There were no railroads and
no trams for us. The lines were held by the Germans or had been
destroyed by the Allies as they fell back. Nor were there automobiles
to be had. Such automobiles as were not hidden had been confiscated by
one side or the other.

Moreover, our journey was a constant succession of stops and starts.
Now we would be delayed for half an hour while some German officer
examined the passes we carried, he meantime eying us with his suspicious
squinted eyes. Now again we would halt to listen to some native's story
of battle or reprisal on ahead. And always there was the everlasting
dim reverberation of the distant guns to draw us forward. And always,
too, there was the difficulty of securing means of transportation.

It was on Sunday afternoon, August twenty-third, when we left Brussels,
intending to ride to Waterloo. There were six of us, in two ancient
open carriages designed like gravy boats and hauled by gaunt livery
horses. Though the Germans had held Brussels for four days now, life in
the suburbs went on exactly as it goes on in the suburbs of a Belgian
city in ordinary times. There was nothing to suggest war or a captured
city in the family parties sitting at small tables before the outlying
cafes