eans in the blue-ribbon
class. It had a hesitating disposition and the authorities, regarding
it as more of a liability than an asset, had passed it over.

But the correspondents counted it a great stroke of fortune to have
any car at all; and, that they might continue to have it, they kept it
at night carefully locked in a room in the hotel.

They had their chauffeur under like supervision. He was one of
their kind, and with the cunning of a diplomat obtained the permit
to buy petrol, most precious of all treasures in the field of war.
Indeed, gasoline, along with courage and discipline, completed the
trinity of success in the military mind.

With the British flag flying at the front, we sped away next morning
on the road to Termonde. At Melle we came upon the blazing
cottages we had seen pictured the night before. Here we
encountered a roving band of Belgian soldiers who were in a free
and careless mood and evinced a ready willingness to put
themselves at our disposal. Under the command of the photographers,
they charged across the fields with fixed bayonets, wriggled up
through the grass, or, standing behind the trenches, blazed away
with their guns at an imaginary enemy. They did some good acting,
grim and serious as death. All except one.

This youth couldn't suppress his sense of humor. He could not, or
would not, keep from laughing, even when he was supposed to be
blowing the head off a Boche. He was properly disciplined and put
out of the game, and we went on with our maneuvers to the
accompaniment of the clicking cameras until the photographers
had gathered in a fine lot of realistic fighting-line pictures.

One of the photographers sat stolidly in the automobile smoking
his cigarette while the others were reaping their harvest.

"Why don't you take these too?" I asked.

"Oh," he replied, "I've been sending in so much of that stuff that I
just got a telegram from my paper saying, 'Pension off that Belgian
regiment which is doing stunts in the trenches.'"

While his little army rested from their maneuvers the Director-in-
Chief turned to me and said:

"Wouldn't you like to have a photograph of yourself in these war-
surroundings, just to take home as a souvenir?"

That appealed to me. After rejecting some commonplace
suggestions, he exclaimed: "I have it. Shot as a German Spy.
There's the wall to stand up against; and we'll pick a crack firing-
squad out of these Belgians. A little bit of all right,