I rambled this morning through the so-called German quarter of Paris
around the Rue d'Hauteville and between the main boulevards and the Rue
Lafayette. All the German and Austrian _teutons_ shops and places
of business are closed. The _brasseries_, where the best Munich or
Pilsener beer, with _wiener Schnitzel_ or _leber-knoedel
suppe_ could be obtained until the end of July, are invisible behind
signless iron shutters. The "intelligence section" of the German general
staff had for years obtained precious military information through the
enterprising, affable German commercial agents, restaurant keepers,
commission merchants, waiters, and hotel errand boys (_chasseurs_)
who thrived in this thrifty quarter.

A wounded sergeant of a Highland regiment, in talking yesterday with an
American friend of mine at Amiens station, bitterly denounced the German
practice of concealing their advance by driving along in front of them
numbers of refugee women and children. The Scottish sergeant said: "Our
battalion was badly cut up. We were using our machine guns to repel a
German advance. Suddenly we saw a lot of women and children coming along
the road towards us. Our officers ordered us to cease firing. The
refugees came pouring through our lines. Immediately behind them,
however, were the German riflemen, who suddenly opened fire on us at
short range with terrible effect. Had it not been for this dastardly
trick of shoving women and children ahead of them at the points of their
bayonets, we might have wiped out this German rifle battalion that
attacked us, but instead of that, we were driven back. Damn these
Germans!" With these words the Scottish sergeant, his right arm
shattered from shoulder to elbow, climbed into the train of British
wounded and was carried off towards Rouen.