It will mean only a few days of waiting, for at Koenigsberg there are already many refugees, and the authorities want to get them to Berlin as soon as the movements of troop trains allow the railway to be reopened for passenger traffic." Fred agreed to all this.

There was nothing else for him to do, for one thing, and, for another, he was by no means unwilling to see whatever there might be to be seen here.

He could guess by this time that without any design he had stumbled on a spot that was reckoned rather important by the Germans, for the time being at least, and he had heard enough about the wonderful efficiency of the German army to be anxious to see that mighty machine in the act of getting ready to move.
He did see a good deal, as a matter of fact, that day and the next.

It was on the famous Saturday night of the first of August that he had left Virballen.

Sunday brought news of a clash with France, far away on the western border, and of the German invasion of Belgium.