Belgian Battles ^3 one small detachment of German infantry north of the Meuse and west of Liege in Belgium. This could only mean that the main advance of the Army of the Meuse from Liege had no more than begun and that, since the Belgians retiring before the Ger- man cavalry were destroying all roads, bridges and railways as they fell back, the advance would be slow when it did come. Hence a great battle in Belgium, north of the Meuse, was hardly to be ex- pected for another week. This was precisely what the situation at Liege necessitated. If the Liege position be likened to the neck of a bottle, a figure justified by the fact that the main roads and railways from Germany to Belgium pass through that city, then the preliminary opera- tion of the Germans was in fact an attempt to pull the cork, which resulted not in extracting it, but push- ing it into the bottle. The result was that while the contents of the bottle did trickle out, the process was at first slow. What the Germans had to do when Liege did not fall was precisely like the task of the Bulgarians after Lule Burgas, when they held both ends of the Orient Railway between Sofia and the Chatalja, but Adrianople commanded a connecting link. To sup- ply and reenforce their troops operating south of Adrianople they were compelled to unload their trains at Mustapha Pasha and transport everything in carts around Adrianople to Dimotika, where they could again use the railway.