The way the German army cleaned out the wine of the country was a revelation to everybody. They would not take what they needed for the day's drinking but would clear out whole cellars at a time and load what was not drunk onto carts to be carried away. The result was that people who had a little warning had recourse to all sorts of ingenious tricks to save some of their store. There was one bright man in the province of Namur who removed his stock of wine--all except a few thousand bottles of new wine--and deposited them in the ornamental pond near his chateau. The Germans arrived a few hours afterward and raised a great fog because they were not satisfied with the amount of wine they found. The owner of the chateau had discreetly slipped away to Brussels and they could not do anything to him. However, they tapped all the walls for secret hiding places and went over the park to see if anything had been buried--all in vain. The next morning, however, the pond was covered with labels which had soaked off and floated to the surface, and after draining the pond the whole stock was carted away. Madame B----, who was there, has an interesting souvenir which she proposes to keep if possible. During the first days of the war her chateau was occupied by a lot of officers, who got gloriously drunk and smashed up pretty well everything in the drawing-room and dining-room. One of them, with a fine sense of humour, took a piece of hard chalk and wrote on the top of her piano in large letters: _Deutschland ueber alles!_ The crowd left the place in the morning without trying to cover their traces, and Madame B---- came in to put things to rights. The first thing she did was to get a large piece of plate glass to cover the top of the piano so that the legend would not be effaced, and over that she placed an ordinary piano cover so that no future visitor would be inclined to erase the inscription. When the war is over this will be an interesting reminder of her visitors.