and poets, actors and
singers, farmers and peasants, rushed to take up arms, and when
the vanguards of the German army struck across the frontier they
found themselves confronted not only by the small regular army of
Belgium, but by the whole nation. Even the women helped to dig the
trenches at Liege, and poured boiling water over Uhlans who came
riding into Belgian villages. It was the rising of a whole people which
led to so much ruthlessness and savage cruelty. The German
generals were afraid of a nation of franc-tireurs, where every man or
boy who could hold a gun shot at the sight of a pointed helmet. Those
high officers to whom war is a science without any human emotion or
pity in its rules, were determined to stamp out this irregular fighting by
blood and fire, and "frightfulness" became the order of the day. I
have heard English officers uphold these methods and use the same
excuse for all those massacres which has been put forward by the
enemy themselves. "War is war... One cannot make war with
rosewater... The franc-tireur has to be shot at sight. A civil population
using arms against an invading army must be taught a bloody lesson.
If ever we get into Germany we may have to face the same trouble,
so it is no use shouting words of horror." War is war, and hell is hell.
Let us for the moment leave it at that, as I left it in the streets of
Dunkirk, where the volunteer army of Belgium and their garrison
troops had come in retreat after heroic resistance against
overwhelming odds, in which their courage without science was no
match for the greatest death machine in Europe, controlled by
experts highly trained in the business of arms.

That night I went for a journey in a train of tragedy I was glad to get
into the train. Here, travelling through the clean air of a quiet night, I
might forget for a little while the senseless cruelties of this war, and
turn my eyes away from the suffering of individuals smashed by its
monstrous injustice.

But the long train was packed tight with refugees. There was only
room for me in the corridor if I kept my elbows close, tightly wedged
against the door. Others tried to clamber in, implored piteously for a
little space, when there was no space. The train jerked forward on
uneasy brakes, leaving a crowd behind.

Turning my head and half my body round, I could see into two of the
lighted carriages behind me, as I stood in the corridor. They were
overfilled with various