morning train to the city. For one whose previous campaigning had
been done in Persia, Mexico and North Africa and the Balkans, it
was a novel experience to leave a large and fashionable hotel after
breakfast, take a run of twenty or thirty miles over stone-paved
roads in a powerful and comfortable car, witness a battle--provided,
of course, that there happened to be a battle on that day's list of
events--and get back to the hotel in time to dress for dinner.
Imagine it, if you please! Imagine leaving a line of battle, where
shells were shrieking overhead and musketry was crackling along
the trenches, and moaning, blood-smeared figures were being
placed in ambulances, and other blood-smeared figures who no
longer moaned were sprawled in strange attitudes upon the ground
--imagine leaving such a scene, I say, and in an hour, or even less,
finding oneself in a hotel where men and women in evening dress
were dining by the light of pink-shaded candles, or in the marble-
paved palm court were sipping coffee and liqueurs to the sound of
water splashing gently in a fountain.

II. The City Of Gloom

In order to grasp the true significance of the events which preceded
and led up to the fall of Antwerp, it is necessary to understand the
extraordinary conditions which existed in and around that city when I
reached there in the middle of August. At that time all that was left to
the Belgians of Belgium were the provinces of Limbourg, Antwerp,
and East and West Flanders. Everything else was in the possession
of the Germans. Suppose, for the sake of, having things quite clear,
that you unfold the map of Belgium. Now, with your pencil, draw a
line across the country from east to west, starting at the Dutch city
of Maastricht and passing through Hasselt, Diest, Aerschot, Malines,
Alost, and Courtrai to the French frontier. This line was, roughly
speaking, "the front," and for upwards of two months fighting of a
more or less serious character took place along its entire length.
During August and the early part of September this fighting
consisted, for the most part, of attempts by the Belgian field army to
harass the enemy and to threaten his lines of communication and of
counter-attacks by the Germans, during which Aerschot, Malines,
Sempst, and Termonde repeatedly changed hands. Some twenty
miles or so behind this line was the great fortified position of
Antwerp, its outer chain of forts enclosing an area with a radius of
n