e could have been brought about in this once famous city of
learning. Yet what changes had been wrought by the war which the
Kaiser and his people had sought, and which had now deluged Europe!

What a tale of treachery and suffering; what a tale of furious
fighting, of gallant deeds, of death, of victory, of wounds, had been
wrought by those months of war which had elapsed since that eventful
day when Henri and Jules discovered themselves in Berlin, the centre of
a hissing, furious crowd, and were hurried to that camp of misery at
Ruhleben! He who ventures to give a full narrative of the deeds done
during those months, of the varying fortunes of the combatants, of the
warfare waged by land and sea and in the air, would needs have a task
far, far beyond him, seeing that every day has been so full of
incidents of surpassing importance to the world that a mere summary of
them would be an undertaking. Yet to realize the situation, as it was
at the moment when Henri and his two friends clambered from the truck
in which they had escaped from the heart of Germany, and dropped to the
ground in the heart of Louvain; to understand the changes which had
occurred during those weary months of waiting at Ruhleben, it becomes a
matter of necessity at this stage to glance, if only briefly, at the
major events which had happened.

We have said already that, at the moment when Germany had thrown down
the gauntlet to France and Russia, Belgium was at peace with the world,
and Britain also. And the tale does not need to be repeated of how
Germany, one of the Powers which had sworn to preserve the sanctity of
Belgium, which had, indeed, signed a declaration to that effect and
sealed it in the sight of others, now tore up that sacred treaty, and
hurled her legions into Belgium. No need even to do more than remind
the reader of how Belgian troops held up the advance of these
treacherous foes, smote them severely, caused them terrible losses, and
then, overwhelmed by numbers, were swept back, leaving the citizens in
the hands of ruthless men, who murdered and butchered them, who
perpetrated unmentionable horrors in the fair cities of King Albert,
and burned thousands of houses and public buildings to the ground.
Everyone must know, too, how that vile act of the Kaiser brought Great
Britain into the conflict; how a British Expeditionary Force sailed
promptly for France, and arrived in the neighbourhood of Mons only just
in time to take it