I looked out from under the dirt-colored top of our motor to find that we had stopped before a little yellow-brown building over the door of which was nailed a black and white letter shingle, saying that here were the headquarters of an artillery regiment. Seeing Hauptmann Kliewer and the Corps Staff officer from Commines get out of their car and enter the house, I concluded they were arranging for our visit to the battery, and climbed out with the others to look around. We stood at the intersection of one narrow, muddy road with another that seemed to lead off at right angles towards the trenches. I looked up the village street, at the end of which a red brick church laid its high white steeple against the blue sky. I could see the shell holes in the church walls, but the steeple appeared untouched. Poor marksmanship! I saw what had been a row of houses. All that was standing now was their walls, and in the ruins of one I saw soldiers picking up the heavy roof tiles; they would use them to floor their dugouts in the trenches. A group of soldiers, evidently off duty, had been watching us, and one of them came over. "I'm a German-American," he said, introducing himself. "I lived in Brooklyn. I worked in an exporting house on Hanover Square." "You're not a German-American," I replied. "There's no such thing. You're a German. That's why you came over to fight, isn't it?" "Sure," he grinned; and then he put to me that everlasting question: "What do Americans think now? Are they more friendly than when I left?" (That was in August, and he had stowed away on an Italian steamer.) I told him that I thought they were; whereupon, apparently greatly relieved, he told me something about the street upon which we stood. "You see those houses over there?" and he pointed to the row of ruins. "Well, when we first came here, Artillery Headquarters were in the last house. Then a shell hit it when the officers were out--_Gott sei Dank!_--so they moved next door. A shell bursting on the street here"--and he indicated where the road was filled in--"smashed up that house so that it caught fire. Then the Colonel moved down to the yellow house there. I wonder when he'll have to move again." I wondered too, and began to feel uncomfortable. Over in front of the yellow house--the first floor had evidently been a store--I saw a group of soldiers looking in the window. They were closely inspecting and talking about the photographic reproductions that have evidently been hung there by orders, there where all the soldiers, back from the trenches on their relief, might see. For I noticed that there were pictures of captured Russian guns, of General Hindenburg, of the victorious German troops entering Lódz. And I thought that here was but another instance of the marvelous system which is carrying on this war against nearly all Europe. Pictures of triumph from the Eastern lines posted where the soldiers in the West can see and be thrilled with national pride.