ty was
destroyed, and the fire had reached the Boulevard Tirlemont, which
faces the railroad station. The night was windless, and the sparks
rose in steady, leisurely pillars, falling back into the furnace from
which they sprang. In their work the soldiers were moving from the
heart of the city to the outskirts, street by street, from house to house.

In each building they began at the first floor and, when that was
burning steadily, passed to the one next. There were no exceptions--
whether it was a store, chapel, or private residence, it was destroyed.
The occupants had been warned to go, and in each deserted shop or
house the furniture was piled, the torch was stuck under it, and into
the air went the savings of years, souvenirs of children, of parents,
heirlooms that had passed from generation to generation.

The people had time only to fill a pillowcase and fly. Some were not
so fortunate, and by thousands, like flocks of sheep, they were
rounded up and marched through the night to concentration camps.
We were not allowed to speak to any citizen of Louvain, but the
Germans crowded the windows of the train, boastful, gloating, eager
to interpret.

In the two hours during which the train circled the burning city war
was before us in its most hateful aspect.

In other wars I have watched men on one hilltop, without haste,
without heat, fire at men on another hill, and in consequence on both
sides good men were wasted. But in those fights there were no
women or children, and the shells struck only vacant stretches of
veldt or uninhabited mountain sides.

At Louvain it was war upon the defenceless, war upon churches,
colleges, shops of milliners and lace-makers; war brought to the
bedside and the fireside; against women harvesting in the fields,
against children in wooden shoes at play in the streets.

At Louvain that night the Germans were like men after an orgy.

There were fifty English prisoners, erect and soldierly. In the ocean of
gray the little patch of khaki looked pitifully lonely, but they regarded
the men who had outnumbered but not defeated them with calm,
uncurious eyes. In one way I was glad to see them there. Later they
will bear witness. They will tell how the enemy makes a wilderness
and calls it war. It was a most weird picture. On the high ground rose
the broken spires of the Church of St. Pierre and the Hotel de Ville,
and descending like steps were row beneath row of houses, roofless,
with