"The Germans had torn up their flag and threw it into the sea."
Entrained Austrian and German troops who came from the Yser, presumably on the way east, were a sight very comforting for the people of Brussels, on account of the depressed bearing of the men. Their uniforms were soiled and tattered, and they looked worried. The spectators remembered the former haughty and ardent look of the same men.
The troops wore flowers in their helmets, and had written on the car sides "To St. Petersburg," but they could not raise a single "Hoch!" among them.
The wounded continue to pour into Ghent. The town council is so pressed for money it has imposed taxes on beer, fuel, petroleum, and yeast.
When the Cossacks raided Ropezica, according to the Cracow _Nova Reforma_, they robbed the house in which a Polish girl was housekeeper. The girl hurried to the commander of the Cossacks, who lived at a hotel.
"I told him my trouble," she said, "whereupon he asked me: 'Are you a Pole or a Jew?' I replied that I was a Pole. 'Well, then, I shall go and see these fellows myself.'
"He took a nagaika (whip) and accompanied me to the house of my employer.
"Then he called to the Cossacks, who had in the meantime broken open a trunk and were just in the act of taking various things away, to come upstairs and showed every one what position he was to take, after which he whipped their faces and chests until they began to bleed. I screamed with horror. He repeated the procedure. Then he asked me:
"'Do you want these fellows shot?' to which I naturally answered 'No.'
"Thereupon he took the Cossacks to a room, where he whipped them once more.
"In the evening he sent for me, and asked me what articles had been ruined and what stolen, whereupon he commanded the Cossacks to return all articles they had stolen. In order to prevent another theft, he gave me a Cossack, who watched the house until the next morning. What would have been the fate of the house had I been a Jewess I dare not imagine."
Here is a little incident of the daily life of General Pau, a hero of the Franco-Prussian war, in which he lost an arm:
A dozen French infantrymen, mud-begrimed, were resting in a drizzling rain on the wayside under the dripping trees. The Corporal sits and tries in vain to light his pipe, at intervals singing lustily.