How Germans Know their Bearings.

Huntly Press and District Gazette, Volume 4, 1 October 1915, Page 3

How Germans Know their Bearings.

The following story is told by an officer who was in Antwerp before its occupation by the Germans and was published in the “ Liverpool Post ” : —ln company with an officer of the Belgian Army he entered a little roadside inn and called for some beer. On the walls of what we should call the bar parlour were a number of large, framed advertisements, among them being one of somebody’s larger beer — needless to say, made in Germany.

This advertisement caught the eye of the Belgian officer, who rose exclaiming: Ho! another of them.’ With his walking stick he smashed the glass and tore the advertisement out, throwing it down back upwards before his English comrade, who saw to his amazement a very perfect map of the country round Antwerp on a scale of six inches to the mile.

The Belgian officer informed the Englishman that when the war began there was not a public house in the district ..without one of those advertisements, and when the invaders lost their bearings their officers all knew where to find a chart not far away. The inn-keeper was a Belgian patriot above suspicion, who, of course, knew nothing about the map. He informed the officers that the advertisement in question had been delivered to him nine years previously by his German brewers, and had been hanging in his parlour ever since