xceedingly likely to choke to death as he lies
temporarily paralyzed and helpless from the shock. I was at Liege and
again here, and I know from my own observations that this is true. At
Liege particularly many of the garrison were caught and penned up in
underground casements, and there we found them afterward dead, but with
no marks of wounds upon them--they had been asphyxiated."

I suppose in times of peace the speaker was a reasonably kind man and
reasonably regardful of the rights of his fellowmen. Certainly he was
most courteous to us and most considerate; but he described this
slaughter-pit scene with the enthusiasm of one who was a partner in a
most creditable and worthy enterprise.

Immediately about Des Sarts stood many telegraph poles in a row, for
here the road, which was the main road from Paris to Brussels, curved
close up under the grass-covered bastions. All the telegraph wires had
been cut, and they dangled about the bases of the poles in snarled
tangles like love vines. The ditches paralleling the road were choked
with felled trees, and, what with the naked limbs, were as spiky as shad
spines. Of the small cottages which once had stood in the vicinity of
the fort not one remained standing. Their sites were marked by
flattened heaps of brick and plaster from which charred ends of rafters
protruded. It was as though a giant had sat himself down upon each
little house in turn and squashed it to the foundation stones.

As a fort Des Sarts dated back to 1883. I speak of it in the past
tense, because the Germans had put it in that tense. As a fort, or as
anything resembling a fort, it had ceased to be, absolutely. The inner
works of it--the redan and the underground barracks, and the magazines,
and all--were built after the style .followed by military engineers back
in 1883, having revetments faced up with brick and stone; but only a
little while ago--in the summer of 1913, to be exact--the job of
inclosing the original works with a glacis of a newer type had been
completed. So when the Germans came along in the first week of
September it was in most respects made over into a modern fort. No
doubt the re-enforcements of reserves that hurried into it to strengthen
the regular garrison counted themselves lucky men to have so massive and
stout a shelter from which to fight an enemy who must work in the open
against them. Poor devils, their hopes crumbled along with their walls
when the Germans