urriedly from
barrack cupboards; rifles, swords, and boots were heaped on to beds
of straw, and upon the top of them lay men exhausted to the point of
death, so that their heads flopped and lolled as the carts came jolting
through the streets. Armoured cars with mitrailleuses, motor-cars
slashed and plugged by German bullets, forage carts and
ambulances, struggled by in a tide of traffic between bodies of foot-
soldiers slouching along without any pride, but dazed with weariness.
Their uniforms were powdered with the dust of the roads, their faces
were blanched and haggard for lack of food and sleep. Some of them
had a delirious look and they stared about them with rolling eyes in
which there was a gleam of madness. Many of these men were
wounded, and spattered with their blood. Their bandages were
stained with scarlet splotches, and some of them were so weak that
they left their ranks and sat in doorways, or on the kerb-stones, with
their heads drooping sideways. Many another man, footsore and
lame, trudged along on one boot and a bandaged sock, with the
other boot slung to his rifle barrel.

Riding alone between two patrols of mounted men was a small boy
on a high horse. He was a fair-haired lad of twelve or so, in a Belgian
uniform, with a tasselled cap over one ear, and as he passed the
Dunquerquoises clapped hands and called out: "Bravo! Bravo!" He
took the ovation with a grin and held his head high.

The cafes in this part of France were crowded with Belgian officers of
all grades. I had never seen so many generals together or such a
medley of uniforms. They saluted each other solemnly, and there
were emotional greetings between friends and brothers who had not
seen each other after weeks of fighting in different parts of the lines,
in this city across the border. Most of the officers were fine, sturdy,
young fellows of stouter physique than the French among whom I
had been roving. But others had the student look and stared
mournfully from gold-rimmed spectacles. There were many middle-
aged men among them who wore military uniforms, but without a
soldier's ease or swagger. When Germany tore up that "scrap of
paper" which guaranteed the integrity of Belgium, every patriotic man
there volunteered for the defence of his country and shouldered a
rifle, though he had never fired a blank cartridge, and put on some
kind of uniform, though he had never drilled in a barrack square.
Lawyers and merchants, schoolmasters