name of the German officer was scribbled who gave the order to
spare. About one hundred houses were chalked in the way I have
described. All these were unscathed by the fire, though they stood in
streets otherwise devastated. The remaining three hundred houses had the
good luck to stand at the outskirts and on streets unvisited by the
house-to-house incendiaries.

Four days after my first visit the Germans burned again the already
wrecked town, turning their attention to the neglected three hundred
houses. I went in as soon as I could safely enter the town, and that was
on the Wednesday after.

As companions in Termonde I had Tennyson Jesse, Radclyffe Dugmore, and
William R. Renton. Mr. Dugmore took photographs of the chalked houses.

"Build a fence around Termonde," suggested a Ghent manufacturer, "leave
the ruins untouched. Let the place stand there, with its burned houses,
churches, orphanage, hospital, factories, to show the world what German
culture is. It will be a monument to their methods of conducting war.
There will be no need of saying anything. That is all the proof we need.
Then throw open the place to visitors from all the world, as soon as
this war is over. Let them draw their own conclusions."

BALLAD OF THE GERMANS

In Wetteren Hospital, Flanders, the writer saw a little peasant girl
dying from the bayonet wounds in her back which the German soldiers had
given her.

Cain slew only a brother,
A lad who was fair and strong,
His murder was careless and honest,
A heated and sudden wrong.

And Judas was kindly and pleasant,
For he snared an invincible man.
But you--you have spitted the children,
As they toddled and stumbled and ran.

She heard you sing on the high-road,
She thought you were gallant and gay;
Such men as the peasants of Flanders:
The friends of a child at play.

She saw the sun on your helmets,
The sparkle of glancing light.
She saw your bayonets flashing,
And she laughed at your Prussian might.

Then you gave her death for her laughter,
As you looked on her mischievous face.
You hated the tiny peasant,
With the hate of your famous race.

You were not frenzied and angry;
You were cold and efficient and keen.
Your thrust was as thorough and deadly
As the stroke of a faithful machine.

You stabbed her deep with your rifle:
You had good reason to sing,
As you footed it on through Flande