eau
a few miles outside the city. At first the German commander was
furious with anger and threatened Ghent with the same punishment
he had meted out to other cities where Germans had been fired on.
Van Hee took a very firm stand, however. He reminded the general
that Americans have a great sentimental interest in Ghent because
of the treaty of peace between England and the United States which
was signed there a century ago, and he warned him that the burning
of the city would do more than anything else to lose the Germans
the sympathy of the American people.

"If you will give me your personal word," said the general finally,
"that there will be no further attacks upon Germans who may enter
the city, and that the wounded soldiers will be taken under American
protection and sent to Brussels by the American Consular
authorities when they have recovered, I will agree to spare Ghent
and will not even demand a money indemnity."

In the course of the informal conversation which followed, General
von Boehn remarked that copies of American papers containing
articles by E. Alexander Powell, criticizing the Germans' treatment of
the Belgian civil population, had come to his attention, and he
regretted that he could not have an opportunity to talk with their
author and give him the German version of the incidents in
question. Mr. Van Hee said that, by a curious coincidence, I had
arrived in Ghent that very morning, whereupon the general asked
him to bring me out to dinner on the following day and issued a safe
conduct through the German lines for the purpose.

We started early the next morning. As there was some doubt about
the propriety of my taking a Belgian military driver into the German
lines I drove the car myself. And, though nothing was said about a
photographer, I took with me Donald Thompson. Before we passed
the city limits of Ghent things began to happen. Entering a street
which leads through a district inhabited by the working classes, we
suddenly found our way barred by a mob of several thousand
excited Flemings.

Above a sea of threatening arms and brandished sticks and angry
faces rose the figures of two German soldiers, with carbines slung
across their backs, mounted on work-horses which they had
evidently hastily unharnessed from a wagon. Like their unfortunate
comrades of the motor-car episode, they too had strayed into the
city by mistake. As we approached the crowd made a concerted
rush for them. A bla