Poor Madame Job. I know Albert, fried eggs, generals and revolvers are playing a dreadful, fire-worky, Catherine-wheel dance in her tired, frightened brain. For one second I have a sneaking, naughty sympathy with the red-faced General. I know from experience he will have a very watery breakfast.... THE MARCH PAST Manhay seems alive with soldiers. Generals, colonels of cavalry regiments and all kinds of magnificently uniformed beings whose precise rank in the military scale I am too ignorant to determine, are riding or driving up in motor-cars, some from Vaux Chavannes, others from the direction of Vielsalm. They look so spruce and smart, especially a colonel of Hussars in a head-dress resembling a diminutive brown busby, who calls out orders in a deep, bass voice. A whole team of horses is picketed in the village street, splendid horses too. They are pawing the ground and neighing, longing to be off. They will get their fill of battle soon enough, poor beasts! Their pastors and masters confer at the street corner. They look picturesque in their long blue military coats. A protective guard of honour is massed in front of the Gendarmerie door. Waves of excitement pass over us. A great personage is here. He drives up in a beautiful car with an attaché whose banded grey-blue coat fits to perfection. The horses are brought along. The mysterious General (the soldiers speak of him with bated breath) mounts. His long blue cloak, with its scarlet facings, falls gracefully round him. He holds the reins in his well-gloved hands. The entire staff, headed by the General, takes up its position in a semicircular sweep at the corner of the street opposite the Gendarmerie. The officers look the picture of arrogance. How I hate them! We all crane our necks out of the window. The army is advancing! Already they are coming round the bend of the road. We can see them as they pass the corner by the château. At first the soldiers scarcely detach themselves from the firwoods. Then they seem to be marching on us in one solid block. Few civilians get the chance to see an army, alien or otherwise, marching down to battle. The sight is piteous, thrilling. The imaginative must visualise ahead so many rotting corpses instead of those lithe, strong men. Personality seems lacking in that endless procession which comes streaming down the road with faces grey as their dust-laden clothes, mechanical in their movements as so many clock-work figures. Yet they look efficient, happy, fit.