y temporary home for the stranded travelers of every
rank and nation.

Antwerp, the temporary capital of Belgium, was at this time invested,
but not yet besieged, by the German army. On the south the city was
already cut off by several regiments of the Ninth and Tenth German
Army Corps under General von Boehn. The River Scheldt and the
Dutch border formed a wall on the north and west. It was to Antwerp,
therefore, that we determined to go. After listening to the usual flood
of warnings against entering the fighting zone, and drinking our fill of
stories of atrocity and hate which every refugee brought across the
border into Holland, we took a couple of reefs in our baggage, and,
hoisting our knapsacks, set our course for the temporary Belgian
capital. By rail we traveled south across the level fields and lush
green meadows of Holland, over bridges ready to be dynamited in
case of invasion, and through training camps of the 450,000 Dutch
soldiers then mobilized along the border. At a little town called
Eschen the train stopped because the Belgians had torn up the
tracks.

Seated on the cross-piece of a joggling two-wheeled ox cart, moving
at the rate of not more than four miles an hour, with a dumb
specimen for a driver, and a volume of Baedeker for interpreter and
guide, we got our first glimpse of the hideous thing called war.
Judging from the looks of the country and the burning villages, we
were on the heels of a devastating army. For three, four, and five
miles on either side of the road beautiful trees lay flat upon the
ground. It was not until we saw groups of Belgian soldiers tearing
down their own walls and hedges and applying match and gasolene
to those which still stood, that we realized that this was a case of
self-inflicted destruction. Farmhouses, stores, churches, old Belgian
mansions, and windmills were either in flames or smouldering ruins.
Where burning had not been sufficient, powder and dynamite had
been applied to destroy landmarks which for centuries had been the
country's pride. As far as the eye could reach the countryside was
flattened to a desert. It reminded me of the Salem fire, through which,
while the piles of debris were still smoking, I had been taken in the
"Boston Journal's" car. But instead of a single town, here for twenty
miles along lay stretched a smouldering waste. The devastation was
for the defensive purpose of giving an unobstructed view to the
cannon of Antwerp'