tered this town the men of the
lower classes took up arms and fired at our soldiers; so the soldiers
burned all their houses and shot all the men who came out of those
houses.

"All this occurred before I was sent here. Had I been the commander of
the troops, I should have shot them without mercy. It is our law for
war times, and these Belgian civilians must be taught that they cannot
fire on German soldiers and not pay for it with their lives and their
homes. With the women and children, however, the case is different. On
my own responsibility I am feeding the destitute. Every day I give away
to these people between twelve hundred and fifteen hundred loaves of
bread; and I give to some who are particularly needy rations of tea and
sugar and coffee and rice. Also, I sell to the butcher shops fresh and
salt meat from our military stores at cost, requiring only that they, in
turn, shall sell it at no more than a fair profit. So long as I am
stationed here I shall do this, for I cannot let them starve before my
eyes. I myself have children."

It was like escaping from a pesthouse to cross the one bridge of Dinant
that remained standing on its piers, and go winding down the lovely
valley, overtaking and passing many German wagon trains, the stout,
middle-aged soldier drivers of which drowsed on their seats; passing
also one marching battalion of foot-reserves, who, their officers
concurring, broke from the ranks to beg newspapers and cigars from us.
On the mountain ash the bright red berries dangled in clumps like
Christmas bells, and some of the leaves of the elm still clung to their
boughs; so that the wide yellow road was dappled like a wild-cat's back
with black splotches of shadow. Only when we curved through some
village that had been the scene of a skirmish or a reprisal did the
roofless shells and the toppled walls of the houses, standing gaunt and
ugly in the sharp sunlight, make us realize that we were still in the
war tracks.

As nearly as we could tell from our brief scrutiny a great change had
come over the dwellers in southern Belgium. In August they had been
buoyant and confident of the ultimate outcome and very proud of the
behavior of their little army. Even when the Germans burst through the
frontier defenses and descended on them in innumerable swarms they were,
for the most part, not daunted by those evidences of the invaders'
numerical superiority and of their magnificent equipment. The mo