That he could find time in the midst of that hideous desolation to sniff at the posies struck us as a typically German bit of sentimentalism.

Just then, though, he stood erect and we were better informed.

He had been talking over a military telephone, the wires of which were buried underground with a concealed transmitter snuggling beneath the geraniums.

The flowers even were being made to contribute their help in forwarding the mechanism of war.

I think, though, that it took a composite German mind to evolve that expedient.
A Prussian would bring along the telephone; a Saxon would bed it among the blossoms.
We progressed onward by a process of alternate stops and starts, through a land bearing remarkably few traces to show for its recent chastening with sword and torch, until in the middle of the blazing hot forenoon we came to Gembloux, which I think must be the place where all the flies in Belgium are spawned.