La
Marquise, near Boulogne. Forty people had been killed and sixty
injured.

After their escape from the horrors of Antwerp the people on this train
of tragedy had been struck again by a blow from the clenched fist of
fate.

4

I went back to Dunkirk again and stayed there for some days in the
hope of getting a pass which would allow me to cross the Belgian
frontier and enter the zone of battle. Even to get out of the railway
station into this fortified town required diplomacy bordering upon
dishonesty, for since the retreat of the Belgian army of volunteers,
Dunkirk had an expectation of a siege and bombardment and no
civilian strangers were allowed to enter. Fortunately I was enabled to
mention a great name, with the implied and utterly untruthful
suggestion that its influence extended to my humble person, so that a
French gentleman with a yard-long bayonet withdrew himself from the
station doorway and allowed me to pass with my two friends.

It struck me then, as it has a thousand times since the war began,
how all precautions must fail to keep out a spy who has a little tact
and some audacity. My two friends and I were provided with
worthless passes which failed to comply with official regulations. We
had no authorized business in Dunkirk, and if our real profession had
been known we should have been arrested by the nearest French or
British officer, sent down to British headquarters under armed guard
and, after very unpleasant experiences as criminals of a dangerous
and objectionable type, expelled from France with nasty words on our
passports. Yet in spite of spy-mania and a hundred methods of spy-
catching, we who were classed with spies--passed all barriers and
saw all the secrets of the town's defence. If instead of being a mild
and inoffensive Englishman I had been a fierce and patriotic German,
I might have brought away a mass of military information of the
utmost value to General von Kluck; or, if out for blood, I might have
killed some very distinguished officers before dying as a faithful son
of the Fatherland. No sentries at the door of the Hotel des Arcades, in
the Place Jean-Bart, challenged three strangers of shabby and
hungry look when they passed through in search of food. Waiters
scurrying about with dishes and plates did not look askance at them
when they strolled into a dining-room crowded with French and British
staff officers. At the far end of the room was a great general--drinking