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ON THE WAY TO THE FRONT 31
Lahn. The country is gloriously pretty, its roads magnificent,
its forests regal in their dark, silent splendour. On the brow
of a hill stands an old ruined castle. The people in Nassau
are friendly and greet and wave to us, and a stylish-looking
young girl throws a red rose into our car—not for us, forsooth,
but as a greeting to her lover, who no doubt is fighting in the
war.
A moment later we skim the pretty riverside road to Ems
along the Lahn, line up the car in a side street and walk back
to the pavement to greet with bared head and a salute a
funeral procession which is going through. The dead man was a
major who had succumbed to his wounds. First comes a band
playing a slow and melancholy march, then two banners
which precede the black-craped coffin on its carriage, and
behind it the Kampfgenossen, members of the Ems Krieger-
verein, all in tall hats, frock-coats and black ties ; the pro-
cession is closed by a number of wounded convalescent soldiers
housed in the Kursaal. The solemn cortege moves slowly up
the street to the railway station, for the dead major’s body
is to be sent to his own home. After a while the band returns
accompanied by the convalescent soldiers. But now it plays
a spirited and lively march. I was told that this was customary
after military funerals—first the grief and the sorrow at the
parting, the duty towards the honoured dead, then the joy
of the survivors returning to the things of life.
The Kurhaus, a fine and roomy building, now contains
eighty patients, and more are expected. Most of the badly
wounded are in bed, but those who can get up are sitting
about on balconies and enjoying the fresh air, and from what
they said to me they all long to be back at the front.
I was told here that a young French lieutenant who had
been badly wounded in the war had found an asylum in the
Kurhaus, and recollecting the reports of the horrible cruelty
with which the Germans, according to the English press,
treat their French prisoners, I could not resist the temptation
to enquire what the French lieutenant had to say about it.
His room, which he occupied alone, was certainly not a matter
for complaint ; it was immediately above one of the six small
rooms in which King William- I. spent a short time each year
from 1867 to 1887, and the view over Ems and the Lahn
valley was the same as the King had enjoyed all those years.
The wounded man was tended by a German doctor, who
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