the British army and had seen
something of the men who had fought their way down from Mons to
Meaux, but for the most part my experience had been with the
French, and it was the spirit of France which I had done my best to
interpret to the English people.

Now I was to see war, more closely and intimately than before, in
another nation; and I stood with homage in my heart before the spirit
of Belgium and that heroic people who, when I came upon them, had
lost all but the last patch of territory, but still fought, almost alone, a
tenacious, bloody and unending battle against the Power which had
laid low their cities, mangled their ancient beauties, and changed their
little land of peaceful industry into a muck-heap of slaughter and
destruction.

Even in France I had this vision of the ruin of a nation, and saw its
victims scattered. Since that day when I came upon the first trainload
of Belgian soldiers near Calais, weary as lame dogs after their retreat,
I had seen an interminable procession of fugitives from that stricken
country and heard from them the tale of Alost, Louvain, Termonde
and other towns where only horror dwelt above incinerated stones
and scraps of human flesh. The fall of Antwerp resounded into
France, and its surrender after words of false hope that it would never
fall shook the soul of the French people with a great dismay. It was
idle to disguise the importance of this German victory at the time
when France, with every nerve strained and with England by her side,
could hardly stem back the tide of those overflowing armies which
had been thrust across the Marne but now pressed westward
towards Calais with a smashing strength. The capture of Antwerp
would liberate large numbers of the enemy's best troops. Already,
within a day of this disaster to the Allied armies, squadrons of
German cavalry swept across the frontiers into France, forcing their
way rapidly through Lille and Armentieres towards Bethune and La
Bassee, cutting lines which had already been cut and then repaired,
and striking terror into French villages which had so far escaped from
these hussars of death. As a journalist, thwarted at every turn by the
increasing severity of military orders for correspondent catching, the
truth was not to be told at any cost. I had suspected the doom of
Antwerp some days before its fate was sealed, and I struck northward
to get as near as possible to the Belgian frontier. The nearest I could
get was Dun