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158 WITH THE GERMAN ARMIES IN THE WEST
cation have lengthened. The field hospitals had to be shifted
forward step by step. They had to be hurriedly replaced by
the clearing hospitals. This is the result of the spirit favouring
the offensive, which is peculiar to the German Army. Hitherto
the French have not more than once had any need of corre-
sponding arrangements. They were compelled from the first
to keep on the defensive. Although it is a misfortune for them
to have hostile armies on their soil, they have at least the
advantage that the railways everywhere reach up to their
front, whereby all transport of troops, wounded, supplies
and ammunition is simplified and shortened. But this ad-
vantage is infinitesimal as compared with the misfortune of
not being masters throughout their territory. And it also
vanishes as soon as the operations assume such an over-
whelming character as was the case in the latter part of
August. In the present period of stagnation of the war the
conditions are naturally different.
The German soldiers have a perfect horror of falling into
the hands of French doctors—they would rather die. When
prisoners and wounded are exchanged some day after the
close of the war, impartial critics in the medical world will
be able to judge on what side the wounded prisoners have been
treated most tenderly and humanely. In more than one
respect this war has demonstrated the impotence and futility
of all conferences and conventions of Geneva, The Hague, and
other places, bearing names which now have an empty and
illusory sound.
But we cannot detain any longer the excellent Captain von
Behr who has been waiting with angelic patience while we
strayed into the subject of hospital organisation. He now takes
me by the arm and we enter the little town.
We enter the house in which von Behr, together with
Count von Eichstedt, Baron von Tschammer, and a few other
officers have taken up their quarters. Soon the supper bell
rang, and we afterwards assembled for coffee in the drawing-
room on the ground floor. The scene which met my eyes here
and which I afterwards saw repeatedly, reminded me vividly
of one of Anton von Werner’s war paintings, showing a brightly
lighted room and an officer seated at the piano accompanying
a singing comrade while the others listen.
Forty-four years have since elapsed, but the picture re-
presented by soldiers billeted in France is still the same.
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