Church in Termonde which the writer saw 42

One of the dangerous Belgian franc-tireurs 51

Fifteenth century Gothic church in Nieuport 69

Sailors lifting a wounded comrade into the motor-ambulance 87

Door chalked by the Germans 105

Street fighting in Alost 123

Belgian officer on the last strip of his country 134

A Belgian boy soldier in the uniform of the first army
which served at Liege and Namur 139

Belgians in their new Khaki uniform, in praise of which
they wrote a song 145

Breton sailors ready for their noon meal in a village under
daily shell fire 187

Sleeping quarters for Belgian soldiers 206

Belgian soldiers telephoning to an anti-aircraft gun the
approach of a German taube 215

Postcards sketched and blocked by a Belgian workman,
A. Van Doorne 229

INTRODUCTION

By Theodore Roosevelt

On August 4, 1914, the issue of this war for the conscience of the world
was Belgium. Now, in the spring of 1916, the issue remains Belgium. For
eighteen months, our people were bidden by their representative at
Washington to feel no resentment against a hideous wrong. They were
taught to tame their human feelings by polished phrases of neutrality.
Because they lacked the proper outlet of expression, they grew
indifferent to a supreme injustice. They temporarily lost the capacity
to react powerfully against wrongdoing.

But today they are at last becoming alive to the iniquity of the
crushing of Belgium. Belgium is the battleground of the war on the
western front. But Belgium is also the battleground of the struggle in
our country between the forces of good and of evil. In the ranks of evil
are ranged all the pacifist sentimentalists, the cowards who possess the
gift of clothing their cowardice in soothing and attractive words, the
materialists whose souls have been rotted by exclusive devotion to the
things of the body, the sincere persons who are cursed with a deficient
sense of reality, and all who lack foresight or who are un