n
secured at a price--and a large one, too. The names of these men
who go to the front with cameras, rather than with rifles or pens,
are generally unknown. They are rarely found beneath the
pictures, yet where would be our vivid impression of courage in
daring and of skill in doing, of cunning strategy upon the field of
battle, of wounded soldiers sacrificing for their comrades, if we had
no pictures? A few pictures are faked, but behind most pictures
there is another tale of daring and of strategy, and that is the tale
concerning the man who took it. That very day thrice these same
men risked their lives.

The apparatus loaded in the car, we were off again. Past a few
barricades of paving-stones and wagons, past the burned houses
which marked the place where the Germans had come within five
miles of Ghent, we encountered some uniformed Belgians who
looked quite as dismal and dispirited as the fog which hung above
the fields. They were the famous Guarde Civique of Belgium. Our
Union Jack, flapping in the wind, was very likely quite the most
thrilling spectacle they had seen in a week, and they hailed it with a
cheer and a cry of "Vive l'Angleterre!" (Long live England!) The
Guarde Civique had a rather inglorious time of it. Wearisomely in
their wearisome-looking uniform, they stood for hours on their
guns or marched and counter-marched in dreary patrolling, often
doomed not even to scent the battle from afar off.

Whenever we were called to a halt for the examination of our
passports, these men crowded around and begged for newspapers.
We held up our stock, and they would clamor for the ones with
pictures. The English text was unintelligible to most of them, but
the pictures they could understand, and they bore them away to
enjoy the sight of other soldiers fighting, even if they themselves
were denied that excitement. Our question to them was always
the same, "Where are the Germans?"

Out of the conflicting reports it was hard to tell whether the
Germans were heading this way or not. That they were expected
was shown by the sign-posts whose directions had just been
obliterated by fresh paint--a rather futile operation, because the
Germans had better maps and plans of the region than the
Belgians themselves, maps which showed every by-path, well and
barn. The chauffeur's brother had been shot in his car by the
Germans but a week before, and he didn't relish the idea of thus
flaunting the enemy's flag along a road