abnormal moods that they committed their atrocities, for in
the hot sun of the first September of the war their blood was
overheated, and in the first intoxication of their march through France,
drunk with the thrill of butcher's work as well as with French wine,
brought back suddenly to the primitive lusts of nature by the spirit of
war, which strips men naked of all refinements and decent veils, they
became for a time savages, with no other restraint than that of Red
Indians on the warpath. They belonged to an Army of Invasion,
marching through hostile territory, and the soul of war robbed the
individual of his own separate soul and put a spell of madness on
him, so that his eyes were bloodshot and his senses inflamed with
lust. In the Peninsular War young Englishmen from decent villages in
quiet countrysides, with pious mothers praying for them at home in
grey old churches, and with pretty sisters engaged in hero-worship,
were bewitched by the same spell of wizardry and did foul and
frightful things which afterwards made them dream of nights and
wake in a cold sweat of shame and horror. There are many young
Germans who will wake out of such dreams when they get back to
Dusseldorf and Bingen-am-Rhein, searching back in their hearts to
find a denial of the deeds which have become incredible after their
awakening from the nightmare. For a little while they had been caught
up in the soul of war and their heroism had been spoilt by obscenity,
and their ideals debased by bestial acts. They will have only one
excuse to their recaptured souls: "It was War." It is the excuse which
man has made through all the ages of his history for the bloody thing
which, in all those ages, has made him a liar to his faith and a traitor
to the gentle gods.

Chapter VII
The Last Stand Of The Belgians

1

During the first two and a half months of the war I was a wanderer in
France, covering many hundreds of miles in zig-zag journeys
between Nancy and the west coast, always on the move, backwards
and forwards, between the lines of the French and British armies, and
watching with a tireless though somewhat haggard interest the drama
of a great people engaged in a life-and-death struggle against the
most formidable army in the world. I had been in the midst of
populations in flight, armies in retreat, and tremendous movements of
troops hurled forward to new points of strategical importance. Now
and again I had come in touch with