ignal for sending the great structure crashing skywards.

The end of the run was Maastricht, now become a town of crucial
interest. It was like a city besieged. Barricades of barbed wire and
paving stones ripped from street ran everywhere. Iron rails and
ties blocked the exits and the small cannon disconcertingly thrust
their nozzles down upon one out of the windows.

I lingered here long enough to secure a carriage and with it made
quick time across the harvest fields. We were soon up on the little
hill back of Meuse. The sun was sinking and for the first time war,
in all its terrible spectacular splendor, smote me hard. From the hill
at my feet there stretched away a great plain filled with a dense
mass of German soldiery. One could scarcely believe that there
were men there so well did their gray-green coats blend with the
landscape. One would think that they were indeed a part of it,
could he not feel the atmosphere vibrant with the mass personality
of the myriad warriors tramping down the crops of the peasants. In
the rear the commissariat vans and artillery still came lumbering
up, while in the very front pranced the horses of the dreaded
Uhlans, who looked with contempt, I imagined, on the Dutch
soldiers as they stood there with the warning that here was
Netherlands soil.

In the fighting German and Belgian troops had already been
pushed up against this line. Here they were greeted with the
challenge: "Lay down your arms. This is the neutral soil of
Holland." Thus many were interned until the end of the war.

As even darkened into night, the endless plain became stippled
over with points of flame from countless campfires. There were
beauty and mystery in this vast menace sweeping the soul of the
onlooker now with horror, and now with admiration. There was a
terrible background to the spectacle--glowing red and luminous. It
was made of the still blazing towns of Mouland and Vise, burned to
the ground by order of the invaders. The fire had been set as a
warning to the inhabitants round about. They were taking the
warning and hastening by the thousands across the border into
Holland, their only haven of safety.

When we drove down from the hill into Eysden, we were in the
midst of these peasants, fleeing before the red wrath rolling up into
the sky. They came shambling in with a few possessions on which
they had hurriedly laid their hands, singly or in families, a pitiful
procession of the disinherited.

So