CAUF. LIBRARY. FIGHTING IN FLANDERS BY E. ALEXANDER POWELL, F.R.G.S. SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT OF THE NEW YORK WORLD WITH THE BELGIAN FORCES IN THE FIELD PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED WITH REPRODUCTIONS OF PHOTOGRAPHS TAKEN AT THE FRONT GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS NEW YORK Published by Arrangement with Charles Scribmer'a Sons COPYRIGHT, 1914, FT CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Published December, 1914 ' Second Impression, December 18, 1914 Third Impression, February 23, 1913 TO MY FRIENDS THE BELGIANS */ have eaten your bread and salt, I have drunk your water and wine; The deaths ye died I have watched beside And the lives that ye led were mine," FOREWORD NOTHING is more unwise, on general principles, than to attempt to write about a war before that war is finished and before history has given it the justice of perspective. The campaign which began with the flight of the Belgian Government from Brussels and which culminated in the fall of Antwerp formed, however, a separate and distinct phase of the Greatest of Wars, and I feel that I should write of that campaign while its events are still sharp and clear in my memory and before the impressions it produced have begun to fade. I hope that those in search of a detailed or technical account of the campaign in Flanders will not read this book, because they are certain to be disap- pointed. It contains nothing about strategy or tactics and few military lessons can be drawn from it. It is merely the story, in simple words, of what I, a professional onlooker, who vii viii FOREWORD was accorded rather exceptional facilities for observation, saw in Belgium during that na- tion's hour of trial. An American, I went to Belgium at the beginning of the war with an open mind. I had few, if any, prejudices. I knew the En- glish, the French, the Belgians, the Germans equally well. I had friends in all four countries and many happy recollections of days I had spent in each. When I left Antwerp after the German occupation I was as pro-Belgian as though I had been born under the red-black- and-yellow banner. I had seen a country, one of the loveliest and most peaceable in Europe, invaded by a ruthless and brutal soldiery; I had seen its towns and cities blackened by fire and broken by shell; I had seen its churches and its historic monuments destroyed; I had seen its highways crowded with hunted, homeless fugitives; I had seen its fertile fields strewn with the corpses of what had once been the manhood of the nation; I had seen its women left husbandless and its children left fatherless; I had seen what was once a Garden of the Lord turned into a land of desolation; and I had seen its people a FOREWORD ix people whom I, like the rest of the world, had always thought of as pleasure-loving, in- efficient, easy-going I had seen this people, I say, aroused, resourceful, unafraid, and right- ing, righting, fighting. Do you wonder that they captured my imagination, that they won my admiration ? I am pro-Belgian; I admit it frankly. I should be ashamed to be any- thing else. E. ALEXANDER POWELL. LONDON, November I, 1914. CONTENTS PAGE FOREWORD vii CHAPTER I. THE WAR CORRESPONDENTS i II. THE CITY OF GLOOM 27 III. THE DEATH IN THE AIR 51 IV. UNDER THE GERMAN EAGLE 76 V. WITH THE SPIKED HELMETS 104 VI. ON THE BELGIAN BATTLE-LINE 132 VII. THE COMING OF THE BRITISH 170 VIII. THE FALL OF ANTWERP 199 ILLUSTRATIONS General von Boehn, commanding the Ninth German Army, and Mr. Powell Frontispiece FACING PACK Mr. Powell (at right) and his photographer, Donald C. Thompson .....* 16 Mr. Joseph Medill Patterson, editor of the Chicago Tribune, and his cinematograph operator, Mr. Edwin Weigle, taking "movie's" at the battle of Waelhem 17 Antwerp was encircled by acres upon acres of barbed- wire entanglements 30 In the wake of the Uhlans. A Belgian village in flames 32 One of the bombs dropped during the Zeppelin raid on Antwerp exploded in the ward of a hospital . 56 The effect of one of the bombs dropped from a Zep- pelin on Antwerp 57 The King of the Belgians (on the right) consulting with the Chief of Staff on the firing-line near Lierre 64 A thirteen-year-old Boy Scout 65 Five thousand women waiting for bread in the court- yard of the Hotel de Ville at Malines .... 80 A seventeen-year-old Belgian girl whose father, mother, brothers, and sister had been killed, and whose home had been destroyed 81 Mr. Powell (in tonneau of car) amid the ruins of Aerschot 88 At Termonde, which the Germans destroyed in spite of the fact that the inhabitants had evacuated the city before their arrival 89 In comparison to its size, the Germans wrought more widespread destruction in Louvain than did the earthquake and fire combined in San Francisco . 96 xiii Group . . 97 xiv ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE The words, "Giite leute. Nicht zu pliindern" ("Good people. Do not plunder"), were scrawled on the door of this house in Lou- vain but there were no words on this house The Belgian armored motor-car, driven by William van Calck of Pittsburg 112 Mr. Powell and the two German soldiers whom he rescued from the mob in Ghent greeted by Amer- ican refugees in Sotteghem 113 "Field kitchens rumbled down the lines, serving hot soup and coffee to the men" 120 Mr. Powell as the guest of General von Boehn and the General Staff of the Ninth German Army . 121 On the road to Paris 128 Steel bridge at Termonde dynamited"} by the Belgians I Another bridge at Termonde de- ( Uroup ' ' l ^ stroyed by shell-fire j Belgian artillery in action at Lierre 144 On the Belgian battle-line 145 The armored train in action near Boom .... 184 The last stand 185 Food for powder; a German killed at the battle of Alost 192 The retreat of the Belgian army from Antwerp . . 193 The bombardment of Antwerp 208 How the despatches describing the fall of Antwerp came through 20? The retreat from Antwerp. The \ Belgian army passing through I Lokoren V Group . . 22 The rear-guard of the retreating I Antwerp garrison . . . . j As the result of fires which owed their origin to the bombardment, flames destroyed one entire side of the Marche aux Souliers . . . 225 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS I THE WAR CORRESPONDENTS WAR correspondents regard war very much as a doctor regards sickness. I don't suppose that a doctor is actually glad that people are sick, but so long as sickness exists in the world he feels that he might as well get the benefit of it. It is the same with war correspondents. They do not wish any one to be killed on their account, but so long as men are going to be killed anyway, they want to be on hand to wit- ness the killing and, through the newspapers, to tell the world about it. The moment that the war "broke," therefore, a veritable army of British and American correspondents descended upon the Continent. Some of them were men of experience and discretion ,who had seen many wars and had a right to wear on their jackets more campaign ribbons than most generals. These men took the war seriously. They were there to get the news and, at no matter what expenditure of effort and money, to get that news to the end 2 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS of a telegraph-wire so that the people in England and America might read it over their coffee-cups the next morning. These men had unlimited funds at their disposal; they had the united influence of thousands of news- papers and of millions of newspaper readers solidly behind them; and they carried in their pockets letters of introduction from editors and ex-presidents and ambassadors and prime ministers. Then there was an army corps of special writers, many of them with well-known names, sent out by various newspapers and magazines to write "mail stuff," as des- patches which are sent by mail instead of telegraph are termed, and "human interest" stories. Their qualifications for reporting the greatest war in history consisted, for the most part, in having successfully "covered" labor troubles and murder trials and coronations and presidential conventions, and, in a few cases, Central American revolutions. Most of the stories which they sent home were written in comfortable hotel rooms in London or Paris or Rotterdam or Ostend. One of these correspondents, however, was not content with THE WAR CORRESPONDENTS 3 a hotel-window view-point. He wanted to see some German soldiers preferably Uhlans. So he obtained a letter of introduction to some people living in the neighborhood of Courtrai, on the Franco-Belgian frontier. He made his way there with considerable difficulty and received a cordial welcome. The very first night that he was there a squadron of Uhlans galloped into the town, there was a slight skirmish, and they galloped out again. The correspondent, who was a sound sleeper, did not wake up until it was all over. Then he learned that the Uhlans had ridden under his very window. Crossing on the same steamer with me from New York was a well-known novelist who in his spare time edits a Chicago newspaper. He was provided with a sheaf of introductions from exalted personages and a bag contain- ing five thousand dollars in gold coin. It was so heavy that he had brought a man along to help him carry it, and at night they took turns in sitting up and guarding it. He confided to me that he had spent most of his life in trying to see wars, but though on four occasions he had travelled many thousands of 4 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS miles to countries where wars were in progress, each time he had arrived just after the last shot was fired. He assured me very earnestly that he would go back to Michigan Boulevard quite contentedly if he could see just one battle. I am glad to say that his perseverance was finally rewarded and that he saw his battle. He never told me just how much of the five thousand dollars he took back to Chicago with him, but from some remarks he let drop I gathered that he had found battle hunting an expensive pastime. One of the great London dailies was repre- sented in Belgium by a young and slender and very beautiful English girl whose name, as a novelist and playwright, is known on both sides of the Atlantic. I met her in the American Consulate at Ghent, where she was pleading with Vice-Consul Van Hee to assist her in getting through the German lines to Brussels. She had heard a rumor that Brussels was shortly going to be burned or sacked or something of the sort, and she wanted to be on hand for the burning and sacking. She had arrived in Belgium wearing a London tailor's idea of what constituted a suitable THE WAR CORRESPONDENTS 5 costume for a war correspondent perhaps I should say war correspondentess. Her luggage was a model of compactness: it consisted of a sleeping-bag, a note-book, half a dozen pencils and a powder-puff. She explained that she brought the sleeping-bag because she under- stood that war correspondents always slept in the field. As most of the fields in that part of Flanders were just then under several inches of water as a result of the autumn rains, a folding canoe would have been more useful. She was as insistent on being taken to see a battle as a child is on being taken to the cir- cus. Eventually her pleadings got the better of my judgment and I took her out in the car towards Alost to see, from a safe distance, what promised to be a small cavalry engagement. But the Belgian cavalry unexpectedly ran into a heavy force of Germans, and before we realized what was happening we were in a very warm corner indeed. Bullets were kicking up little spurts of dust about us; bullets were tang-tanging through the trees and clipping off twigs, which fell down upon our heads; the rat-tat-tat of the German musketry was answered by the angry snarl of the Belgian 6 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS machine guns; in a field near by the bodies of two recently killed Cuirassiers lay sprawled grotesquely. The Belgian troopers were stretched flat upon the ground, a veteran English correspondent was giving a remarkable imitation of the bark on a tree, and my driver, my photographer, and I were peering cautiously from behind the corner of a brick farmhouse. I supposed that Miss War Correspondent was there too, but when I turned to speak to her she was gone. She was standing beside the car, which we had left in the middle of the road because the bullets were flying too thickly to turn it around, dabbing at her nose with a powder-puff which she had left in the tonneau and then critically examining the effect in a pocket mirror. "For the love of God!" said I, running out and dragging her back to shelter, "don't you know that you'll be killed if you stay out here?" "Will I?" said she sweetly. "Well, you surely don't expect me to be killed with my nose unpowdered, do you?" That evening I asked her for her impressions of her first battle. THE WAR CORRESPONDENTS 7 "Well," she answered, after a meditative pause, "it certainly was very chic." The third and largest division of this jour- nalistic army consisted of free-lances who went to the Continent at their own expense on the chance of "stumbling into something." About the only thing that any of them stumbled into was trouble. Some of them bore the most extraordinary credentials ever carried by a correspondent; some of them had no creden- tials at all. One gentleman, who was halted while endeavoring to reach the firing-line in a decrepit cab, informed the officer before whom he was taken that he represented the Ladies' Home Journal of Philadelphia. Another displayed a letter from the editor of a well- known magazine, saying that he "would be pleased to consider any articles which you care to submit." A third, upon being questioned, said naively that he represented his literary agent. Then I almost forgot him there was a Methodist clergyman from Boston who ex- plained to the Provost Marshal that he was gathering material for a series of sermons on the horrors of war. Add to this army of writers another army of photographers and 8 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS war artists and cinematograph operators and you will have some idea of the problem with which the military authorities of the warring nations were confronted. It finally got down to the question of which should be permitted to remain in the field the war correspondents or the soldiers. There wasn't room for them both. It was decided to retain the soldiers. The general staff's of the various armies handled the war-correspondent problem in different ways. The British War Office at first announced that under no considerations would any correspondents be permitted in the areas where British troops were operating, but such a howl went up from Press and public alike that this order was modified and it was announced that a limited number of correspon- dents, representing the great newspaper syndi- cates and press associations, would, after fulfilling certain rigorous requirements, be permitted to accompany his Majesty's forces in the field. These fortunate few having been chosen after much heartburning, they pro- ceeded to provide themselves with the pre- scribed uniforms and field kits, and some of them even purchased horses. After the war THE WAR CORRESPONDENTS 9 had been in progress for three months they were still in London. The French General Staff likewise announced that no correspon- dents would be permitted with the armies, and when any were caught they were uncere- moniously shipped to the nearest port, between two unsympathetic gendarmes, with a warning that they would be shot if they were caught again. The Belgian General Staff made no announcement at all. The police merely told those correspondents who succeeded in getting into the fortified position of Antwerp that their room was preferable to their company and informed them at what hour the next train for the Dutch frontier was leaving. Now the correspondents knew perfectly well that neither the British nor the French nor the Belgians would actually shoot them, if for no other reason than the unfavorable impression which would be produced by such a proceeding; but they did know that if they tried the patience of the military authorities too far they would spend the rest of the war in a military prison. So, as an imprisoned correspondent is as valueless to the newspaper which employs him as a prisoner of war is to the nation whose io FIGHTING IN FLANDERS uniform he wears, they compromised by picking up such information as they could along the edge of things. Which accounts for most of the despatches being dated from Ostend or Ghent or Dunkirk or Boulogne or from "the back of the front," as one correspondent inge- niously put it. As for the Germans, they said bluntly that any correspondents found within their lines would be treated as spies which meant being blindfolded and placed between a stone wall and a firing-party. And every correspondent knew that they would do exactly what they said. They have no proper respect for the Press, these Germans. That I was officially recognized by the Belgian Government and given a laissez-passer by the military Governor of Antwerp permit- ting me to pass at will through both the outer and inner lines of fortifications, that a motor- car and a military driver were placed at my disposal, and that throughout the campaign in Flanders I was permitted to accompany the Belgian forces in the field, was not due to any peculiar merits or qualifications of my own, or even to the influence exerted by the powerful paper which I represented, but to a THE WAR CORRESPONDENTS n series of unusual and fortunate circumstances which there is no need to detail here. There were many correspondents who merited from sheer hard work what I received as a result of extraordinary good fortune. The civilians who were wandering, foot- loose and free, about the theatre of operations were by no means confined to the representa- tives of the Press; there was an amazing number of young Englishmen and Americans who described themselves as "attaches" and "consular couriers" and "diplomatic mes- sengers," and who intimated that they were engaged in all sorts of dangerous and important missions. Many of these were adventurous young men of means who had "come over to see the fun" and who had induced the Amer- ican diplomatic representatives in London and The Hague to give them despatches of more or less importance usually less than more to carry through to Antwerp and Brussels. In at least one instance the official envelopes with the big red seals which they so ostentatiously displayed contained nothing but sheets of blank paper. Their sole motive was in nearly all cases curiosity. They had no more business 12 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS wandering about the war zone than they would have had wandering about a hospital where men were dying. Belgium was being slowly strangled; her villages had been burned, her fields laid waste, her capital was in the hands of the enemy, her people were battling for their national existence; yet these young men came in and demanded first-row seats, pre- cisely as though the war was a spectacle which was being staged for their special benefit. One youth, who in his busy moments practised law in Boston, though quite frankly admitting that he was only actuated by curiosity, was exceedingly angry with me because I declined to take him to the firing-line. He seemed to regard the desperate battle which was then in progress for the possession of Antwerp very much as though it was a football game in the Harvard stadium; he seemed to think that he had a right to see it. He said that he had come all the way from Boston to see a battle, and when I remained firm in my refusal to take him to the front he intimated quite plainly that I was no gentleman and that nothing would give him greater pleasure than to have a shell explode in my immediate vicinity. THE WAR CORRESPONDENTS 13 For all its grimness, the war was productive of more than one amusing episode. I re- member a mysterious stranger who called one morning on the American Consul at Ostend to ask for assistance in getting through to Brussels. When the Consul asked him to be seated he bowed stiffly and declined, and when a seat was again urged upon him he explained, in a hoarse whisper, that sewn in his trousers were ten thousand dollars in bank-notes which he was taking through to Brussels for the relief of stranded English and Americans hence he couldn't very well sit down. Of all the horde of adventurous characters who were drawn to the Continent on the out- break of war as iron filings are attracted by a magnet, I doubt if there was a more picturesque figure than a little photographer from Kansas named Donald Thompson. I met him first while paying a flying visit to Ostend. He blew into the Consulate there wearing an American army shirt, a pair of British officer's riding-breeches, French puttees, and a High- lander's forage-cap, and carrying a camera the size of a parlor phonograph. No one but an American could have accomplished i 4 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS what he had, and no American but one from Kansas. He had not only seen war, all military prohibitions to the contrary, but he had actu- ally photographed it. Thompson is a little man, built like Harry Lauder; hard as nails, tough as raw-hide, his skin tanned to the color of a well-smoked meerschaum, and his face perpetually wreathed in what he called his "sunflower smile." He affects riding-breeches and leather leggings and looks, physically as well as sartorially, as though he had been born on horseback. He has more chilled-steel nerve than any man I know, and before he had been in Belgium a month his name became a synonym throughout the army for coolness and daring. He reached Europe on a tramp steamer with an overcoat, a tooth- brush, two clean handkerchiefs, and three large cameras. He expected to have some of them confiscated or broken, he explained, so he brought along three as a measure of precaution. His cameras were the largest size made. "By using a big camera no one can possibly accuse me of being a spy," he explained ingenuously. His papers consisted of an American passport, a certificate of membership in the Benevolent THE WAR CORRESPONDENTS 15 and Protective Order of Elks, and a letter from Colonel Sam Hughes, Canadian Minister of Militia, authorizing him to take pictures of Canadian troops wherever found. Thompson made nine attempts to get from Paris to the front. He was arrested eight times and spent eight nights in guard-houses. Each time he was taken before a military tribunal. Utterly ignoring the subordinates, he would insist on seeing the officer in com- mand. He would grasp the astonished French- man by the hand and inquire solicitously after his health and that of his family. "How many languages do you speak?" I asked him. "Three," said he, "English, American, and Yankee." On one occasion he commandeered a motor- cycle standing outside a cafe and rode it until the petrol ran out, whereupon he abandoned it by the roadside and pushed on afoot. On another occasion he explained to the French officer who arrested him that he was endeavor- ing to rescue his wife and children, who were in the hands of the Germans somewhere on the Belgian frontier. The officer was so i6 affected by the pathos of the story that he gave Thompson a lift in his car. As a matter of fact, Thompson's wife and family were quite safe in Topeka, Kansas. Whenever he was stopped by patrols he would display his letter from the Minister of Militia and explain that he was trying to overtake the Canadian troops. "Vive le Canada!" the French would shout enthusiastically. "Hurrah for our brave allies, les Canadiens ! They are doubtless with the British at the front" and permit him to proceed. Thompson did not think it neces- sary to inform them that the nearest Canadian troops were still at Quebec. When within sound of the German guns he was arrested for the eighth time and sent to Amiens escorted by two gendarmes, who were ordered to see him aboard the first train for Boulogne. They evidently considered that they had followed instructions when they saw him buy a through ticket for London. Shortly after midnight a train loaded with wounded pulled into the station. Assisted by some British soldiers, Thompson scrambled to the top of a train standing at the next platform and made a flashlight picture. A wild panic THE WAR CORRESPONDENTS 17 ensued in the crowded station. It was thought that a German bomb had exploded. Thomp- son was pulled down by the police and would have been roughly handled had it not been for the interference of his British friends, who said that he belonged to their regiment. Shortly afterwards a train loaded with artillery which was being rushed to the front came in. Thompson, once more aided and abetted by the British Tommies, slipped under the tar- paulin covering a field-gun and promptly fell asleep. When he awoke the next morning he was at Mons. A regiment of Highlanders was passing. He exchanged a cake of choco- late for a fatigue-cap and fell in with them. After marching for two hours the regiment was ordered into the trenches. Thompson went into the trenches too. All through that terrible day Thompson plied his trade as the soldiers plied theirs. They used their rifles and he used his camera. Men were shot dead on either side of him. A storm of shrapnel shrieked and howled overhead. He said that the fire of the German artillery was amazingly accurate and rapid. They would concentrate their entire Ere on a single regiment or battery i8 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS and when that regiment or battery was out of action they would turn to another and do the same thing over again. When the British fell back before the German onset Thompson remained in the trenches long enough to get pictures of the charging Germans. Then he ran for his life. That night he bivouacked with a French line regiment, the men giving him food and a blanket. The next morning he set out for. Amiens en route for England. As the train for Boulogne, packed to the doors with refugees, ' was pulling out of the Amiens station, he noticed a first-class compartment marked "Reserved," the only occupant being a smartly gowned young woman. Thompson said that she was very good-looking. The train was moving, but Thompson took a running jump and dived head foremost through the window, landing in the lady's lap. She was considerably startled until he said that he was an American. That seemed to explain everything. The young woman proved to be a Russian countess who had been living in Paris and who was returning, via England, to Petrograd. The French Government had placed a compart-; THE WAR CORRESPONDENTS 19 ment at her disposal, but in the jam at the Paris station she had become separated from her maid, who had the bag containing her money. Thompson recounted his adventures at Mons and asked her if she would smuggle his films into England concealed on her person, as he knew from previous experi- ence that he would be stopped and searched by Scotland Yard detectives when the train reached Boulogne and that, in all probability, the films would be confiscated or else held up so long that they would be valueless. The countess finally consented, but suggested, in return for the danger she was incurring, that Thompson lend her a thousand francs, which she would return as soon as she reached London. As he had with him only two hundred and fifty francs, he paid her the balance in United Cigar Stores coupons, some of which he chanced to have in his pocket-book, and which, he explained, was American war currency. He told me that he gave her almost enough to get a brier pipe. At Boulogne he was arrested, as he had foreseen, was stripped, searched, and his camera opened, but as nothing found he was permitted to continue to 20 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS London, where he went to the countess's hotel and received his films and, I might add, his money and cigar coupons. Two hours later, having posted his films to America, he was on his way to Belgium. Landing at Ostend, he managed to get by train as far as Malines. He then started to walk the twenty-odd miles into Brussels, carrying his huge camera, his overcoat, field- glasses, and three hundred films. When ten miles down the highway a patrol of Uhlans suddenly spurred out from behind a hedge and covered him with their pistols. Thompson promptly pulled a little silk American flag out of his pocket and shouted "Hoch der Kaiser!" and "Auf wiedersehn" which constituted his entire stock of German. Upon being examined by the officer in command of the German outpost, he explained that his Canadian creden- tials were merely a blind to get through the lines of the Allies and that he really represented a syndicate of German newspapers in America, whereupon he was released with apologies and given a seat in an ambulance which was going into Brussels. As his funds were by this time running low, he started out to look for inexpen- THE WAR CORRESPONDENTS 21 sive lodgings. As he remarked to me, "I thought we had some pretty big house-agents out in Kansas, but this 'Mr. A. Louer' has them beaten a mile. Why, that fellow has his card on every house that's for rent in Brussels!" The next morning, while chatting with a pretty English girl in front of a cafe, a German officer who was passing ordered his arrest as a spy. "All right," said Thompson, "I'm used to being arrested, but would you mind waiting just a minute until I get your picture ?" The German, who had no sense of humor, promptly smashed the camera with his sword. Despite Thompson's protestations that he was an inoffensive American, the Germans destroyed all his films and ordered him to be out of the city before six that evening. He walked the thirty miles to Ghent and there caught a train for Ostend to get one of his reserve cameras, which he had cached there. When I met him in Ostend he said that he had been there overnight, that he was tired of a quiet life and was looking for action, so I took him back with me to Antwerp. The Belgians had made an inflexible rule that no photographers would 22 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS be permitted with the army, but before Thompson had been in Antwerp twenty-four hours he had obtained permission from the Chief of the General Staff himself to take pictures when and where he pleased. Thomp- son remained with me until the fall of Antwerp and the German occupation, and no man could have had a more loyal or devoted companion.! It is no exaggeration to say that he saw more of the campaign in Flanders than any indi- vidual, military or civilian "le Capitaine Thompson," as he came to be known, being a familiar and popular figure on the Belgian battle-line. There is one other person of whom passing mention should be made, if for no other reason than because his name will appear from time to time in this narrative. I take pleasure, therefore, in introducing you to M. Marcel Roos, the young Belgian gentleman who drove my motor-car. When war was declared, Roos, who belonged to the jeunesse doree of Brussels, gave his own ninety horse-power car to the Government and enlisted in a regiment of grenadiers. Because he was as familiar with the highways and byways of Belgium as a THE WAR CORRESPONDENTS 23 ihousewife is with her kitchen, and because he spoke English, French, Flemish, and German, he was detailed to drive the car which the Belgian Government placed at my disposal. He was as big and loyal and good-natured as a St. Bernard dog and he was as cool in danger as Thompson which is the highest compli- ment I can pay him. Incidentally, he was the most successful forager that I have ever seen; more than once, in villages which had apparently been swept clean of everything edible by the Belgians or the Germans, he produced quite an excellent dinner as mys- teriously as a conjurer produces rabbits from a hat. Now you must bear in mind that although one could get into Antwerp with comparative ease, it by no means followed that one could get out to the firing-line. A long procession of correspondents came to Antwerp and re- mained a day or so and then went away again without once getting beyond the city gates. Even if one succeeded in obtaining the neces- sary laissez-passer from the military Govern- ment, there was no way of reaching the front, as all the automobiles and all except the most 24 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS decrepit horses had been requisitioned for the use of the army. There was, you understand, no such thing as hiring an automobile, or even buying one. Even the few people who had influence enough to retain their cars found them useless, as one of the very first acts of the military authorities was to commandeer the entire supply of petrol. The bulk of the cars were used in the ambulance service or for purposes of transport, the army train con- sisting entirely of motor-vehicles. Staff-officers, certain Government officials, and members of the diplomatic and consular corps were pro- vided by the Government with automobiles and military drivers. Every one else walked or used the trams. Thus it frequently hap- pened that a young staff-officer, who had never before known the joys of motoring, would tear madly down the street in a luxurious limousine, his spurred boots resting on the broadcloth cushions, while the ci-devant owner of the car, who might be a banker or a merchant prince, would jump for the sidewalk to escape being run down. With the declaration of war and the taking over of all automobiles by the mili- tary, all speed laws were flung to the winds. THE WAR CORRESPONDENTS 25 No matter how unimportant his business, every one tore through the city streets as though the devil (or the Germans) were behind him. The staid citizens of Antwerp quickly developed a remarkable agility in getting out of the way of furiously driven cars. They had to. Other- wise they would have been killed. Because, from the middle of August to the middle of October, Antwerp was the capital of Belgium and the seat of the King, Cabinet, and diplomatic corps; because from it any point on the battle-front could easily be reached by motor-car; and because, above all else, it was at the end of the cable and the one place in Belgium where there was any certainty of despatches getting through to England, I made it my headquarters during the operations in Flanders, going out to the front in the morning and returning to the Hotel St. Antoine at night. I doubt if war correspondence has ever been carried on under such comfortable, even luxurious, conditions. "Going out to the front" became as commonplace a proceed- ing as for a commuter to take the morning train to the city. For one whose previous campaigning had been done in Persia and 26 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS Mexico and North Africa and the Balkans, it was a novel experience to leave a large and fashionable hotel after breakfast, take a run of twenty or thirty miles over stone-paved roads in a powerful and comfortable car, witness a battle provided, of course, than there happened to be a battle on that day's list of events and get back to the hotel in time to dress for dinner. Imagine it, if you please ! Imagine leaving a line of battle, where shells were shrieking overhead and mus- ketry was crackling along the trenches, and moaning, blood-smeared figures were being placed in ambulances and other blood-smeared figures who no longer moaned were sprawled in strange attitudes upon the ground imagine leaving such a scene, I say, and in an hour, or even less, finding oneself in a hotel where men and women in evening dress were dining by the light of pink-shaded candles, or in the marble- paved palm court were sipping coffee and liqueurs to the sound of water splashing gently in a fountain. II THE CITY OF GLOOM IN order to grasp the true significance of the events which preceded and led up to the fall of Antwerp, it is necessary to under- stand the extraordinary conditions which ex- isted in and around that city when I reached there the middle of August. At that time all that was left to the Belgians of Belgium were the provinces of Limbourg and East and West Flanders. Everything else was in the posses- sion of the Germans. Suppose, for the sake of having things quite clear, that you unfold the map of Belgium. Now, with your pencil, draw a line across the country from east to west, starting at the Dutch city of Maastricht and passing through Hasselt, Diest, Aerschot, Malines, Alost, and Courtrai to the French frontier. This line was, roughly speaking, "the front," and for upwards of two months fighting of a more or less serious character took place along its entire length. During August and the early part of September this fighting consisted, for the most part, of attempts by 27 28 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS the Belgian field army to harass the enemy and to threaten his lines of communication and of counter-attacks by the Germans, during which Aerschot, Malines, Sempst, and Termonde repeatedly changed hands. Some twenty miles or so behind this line was the great fortified position of Antwerp, its outer chain of forts enclosing an area with a radius of nearly fifteen miles. Antwerp, with its population of four hun- dred thousand souls, its labyrinth of dim and winding streets lined by mediaeval houses, and its splendid modern boulevards, lies on the east bank of the Scheldt, about fifteen miles from Dutch territorial waters, at a hairpin- turn in the river. The defences of the city were modern, extensive, and generally believed, even by military experts, to be little short of impregnable. In fact, Antwerp was almost universally considered one of the three or four strongest fortified positions in Europe. In order to capture the city it would be necessary for an enemy to break through four distinct lines of defence, any one of which, it was believed, was strong enough to successfully oppose any force which could be brought THE CITY OF GLOOM 29 against it. The outermost line of forts began at Lierre, a dozen miles to the southeast of the city, and swept in a great quarter-circle, through Wavre-St. Catherine, Waelhem, Heyn- donck, and Willebroeck, to the Scheldt at Ruppelmonde. Two or three miles behind this outer line of forts a second line of defence was formed by the Rupel and the Nethe, which, together with the Scheldt, make a great natural waterway around three sides of the city. Back of these rivers, again, was a second chain of forts completely encircling the city on a five-mile radius. The moment that the first German soldier set his foot on Belgian soil the military authorities began the herculean task of clearing of trees and buildings a great zone lying between this inner circle of forts and the city ramparts in order that an investing force might have no cover. It is estimated that within a fortnight the Belgian sappers and engineers destroyed property to the value of $80,000,000. Not San Francisco after the earthquake, nor Dayton after the flood, nor Salem after the fire presented scenes of more complete desolation than did the suburbs of Ant- werp after the soldiers had finished with them. 30 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS On August i, 1914, no city in all Europe could boast of more beautiful suburbs than Antwerp. Hidden amid the foliage of great wooded parks were stately chateaux; splendid country houses rose from amid acres of green plush lawns and blazing gardens; the network of roads and avenues and bridle-paths were lined with venerable trees, whose branches, meeting overhead, formed leafy tunnels; scat- tered here and there were quaint old-world villages, with plaster walls and pottery roofs and lichen-covered church spires. By the last day of August all this had disappeared. The loveliest suburbs in Europe had been wiped from the earth as a sponge wipes figures from a slate. Every house and church and windmill, every tree and hedge and wall, in a zone some two or three miles wide by twenty long, was literally levelled to the ground. For mile after mile the splendid trees which lined the high- roads were ruthlessly cut down; mansions which could fittingly have housed a king were dynamited; churches whose walls had echoed to the tramp of the Duke of Alva's mail-clad men-at-arms were levelled; villages whose picturesqueness was the joy of artists and THE CITY OF GLOOM 31 travellers were given over to the flames. Cer- tainly not since the burning of Moscow has there been witnessed such a scene of self- inflicted desolation. When the work of the engineers was finished a jack-rabbit could not have approached the forts without being seen. When the work of levelling had been com- pleted, acres upon acres of barbed-wire entan- glements were constructed, the wires being grounded and connected with the city lighting system so that a voltage could instantly be turned on which would prove as deadly as the electric chair at Sing Sing. Thousands of men were set to work sharpening stakes and driving these stakes, point upward, in the ground, so as to impale any soldiers who fell upon them. In front of the stakes were "man- traps," thousands of barrels with their heads knocked out being set in the ground and then covered with a thin layer of laths and earth, which would suddenly give way if a man walked upon it and drop him into the hole below. And beyond the zones of entangle- ments and chevaux de frise and man-traps the beet and potato fields were sown with mines which were to be exploded by electricity when 32 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS the enemy was fairly over them and blow that enemy, whole regiments at a time, into the air. Stretching across the fields and meadows were what looked at first glance like enormous red-brown serpents but which proved, upon closer inspection, to be trenches for infantry. The region to the south of Antwerp is a net- work of canals, and on the bank of every canal rose, as though by magic, parapets of sand- bags. Charges of dynamite were placed under every bridge and viaduct and tunnel. Barri- cades of paving-stones and mattresses and sometimes farm carts were built across the high- ways. At certain points wires were stretched across the roads at the height of a man's head for the purpose of preventing sudden dashes by armored motor-cars. The walls of such buildings as were left standing were loopholed for musketry. Machine guns and quick-firers were mounted everywhere. At night the white beams of the search-lights swept this zone of desolation and turned it into day. Now the pitiable thing about it was that all this enormous destruction proved to have been wrought for nothing, for the Germans, instead of throwing huge masses of infantry against i 1 THE CITY OF GLOOM 33 the forts, as it was anticipated that they would do, and thus giving the entanglements and the mine-fields and the machine guns a chance ' to get in their work, methodically pounded the forts to pieces with siege-guns stationed a dozen miles away. In fact, when the Germans entered Antwerp not a strand of barbed wire had been cut, not a barricade defended, not a mine exploded. This, mind you, was not due to any lack of bravery on the part of the Belgians Heaven knows, they did not lack for that ! but to the fact that the Germans never gave them a chance to make use of these elaborate and ingenious devices. It was like a man letting a child painstakingly construct an edifice of building-blocks and then, when it was completed, suddenly sweeping it aside with his hand. As a result of these elaborate precautions, it was as difficult to go in or out of Antwerp as it is popularly supposed to be for a mil- lionaire to enter the kingdom of Heaven. Sentries were as thick as policemen on Broad- way. You could not proceed a quarter of a mile along any road, in any direction, without being halted by a harsh "Qui vive?" and 34 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS having the business end of a rifle turned in your direction. If your papers were net in order you were promptly turned back or arrested as a suspicious character and taken before an officer for examination though if you were sufficiently in the confidence of the military authorities to be given the password, you were usually permitted to pass without further question. It was some time before I lost the thrill of novelty and excitement pro- duced by this halt-who-goes-there-advance- friend-and-give-the-countersign business. It was so exactly the sort of thing that, as a boy, I used to read about in books by George A. Henty that it seemed improbable and unreal. When we were motoring at night and a per- emptory challenge would come from out the darkness and the lamps of the car would pick out the cloaked figure of the sentry as the spot- light picks out the figure of an actor on the stage, and I would lean forward and whisper the magic mot d'ordre, I always had the feeling that I was taking part in a play which was not so very far from the truth, for, though I did not appreciate it at the time, we were all actors, more or less important, in the greatest -drama ever staged. THE CITY OF GLOOM 35 In the immediate vicinity of Antwerp the sentries were soldiers of the regular army and understood a sentry's duties, but in the outlying districts, particularly between Ostend and Ghent, the roads were patrolled by members of the Garde civique, all of whom seemed imbued with the idea that the safety of the nation depended upon their vigilance, which was a very commendable and proper attitude indeed. When I was challenged by a Garde civique I was always a little nervous, and wasted no time whatever in jamming on the brakes, because the poor fellows were nearly always excited and handled their rifles in a fashion which was far from being reassuring. More than once, while travelling in the out- lying districts, we were challenged by civil guards who evidently had not been intrusted with the password, but who, when it was whispered to them, would nod their heads importantly and tell us to pass on. "The next sentry that we meet," I said to Roos on one of these occasions, "probably has no idea of the password. I'll bet you a box of cigars that I can give him any word that comes into my head ^and that he won't know the difference." 3 6 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS As we rolled over the ancient drawbridge which gives admittance to sleepy Bruges, a bespectacled sentry, who looked as though he had suddenly been called from an accountant's desk to perform the duties of a soldier, held up his hand, palm outward, which is the signal to stop the world over. "Halt!" he commanded quaveringly. "Ad- vance slowly and give the word." I leaned out as the car came opposite him. "Kalamazoo," I whispered. The next instant I was looking into the muzzle of his rifle. "Hands up !" he shouted, and there was no longer any quaver in his voice. "That is not the word. I shouldn't be surprised if you were German spies. Get out of the car!" It took half an hour of explanations to con- vince him that we were not German spies, that we really did know the password, and that we were merely having a joke though not, as we had planned, at his expense. The force of citizen soldiery known as the * Garde civique, has, so far as I am aware, no exact counterpart in any other country. It is composed of business and professional men whose chief duties, prior to the war, had THE CITY OF GLOOM 37 been to show themselves on occasions of cere- mony arrayed in gorgeous uniforms, which varied according to the province. The mounted division of the Antwerp Garde civique wore a green-and-scarlet uniform which resembled as closely as possible that of the Guides, the crack cavalry corps of the Belgian army. In" the Flemish towns the civil guards wore a blue coat, so long in the skirts that it had to be buttoned back to permit of their walking, and a hat of stiff black felt, resembling a bowler, with a feather stuck rakishly in the band. Early in the war the Germans announced that they would not recognize the Gardes civique s as combatants, and that any of them who were captured while fighting would meet with the same fate as armed civilians. This drastic ruling resulted in many amusing episodes. When it was learned that the Germans were approaching Ghent, sixteen hundred civil guardsmen threw their rifles into the canal and, stripping off their uniforms, ran about in the pink and light-blue undergarments which the Belgians affect, frantically begging the townspeople to lend them civilian clothing. As a whole, however, these citizen soldiers did 38 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS admirable service, guarding the roads, tunnels, and bridges, assisting the refugees, preserving order in the towns, and, in Antwerp, taking entire charge of provisioning the army. No account of Antwerp in war time would be complete without at least passing mention of the boy scouts, who were one of the city's most picturesque and interesting features. I don't quite know how the city could have gotten along without them. They were always on the job; they were to be seen everywhere and they did everything. They acted as messengers, as doorkeepers, as guides, as order- lies for staff-officers, and as couriers for the various ministries; they ran the elevators in the hotels, they worked in the hospitals, they assisted the refugees to find food and lodgings. The boy scouts stationed at the various minis- tries were on duty twenty-four hours at a stretch. They slept rolled up in blankets on the floors; they obtained their meals where and when they could and paid for them them- selves, and made themselves extremely useful. If you possessed sufficient influence to obtain a motor-car, a boy scout was generally detailed to sit beside the driver and open the door and THE CITY OF GLOOM 39 act as a sort of orderly. I had one. His name was Joseph. He was most picturesque. He wore a sombrero with a cherry-colored pug- garee and a bottle-green cape, and his green stockings turned over at the top so as to show knees as white and shapely as those of a woman. To tell the truth, however, I had nothing for him to do. So when I was not out in the car he occupied himself in running the lift at the Hotel St. Antoine. Joseph was with me during the German attack on Waelhem. We were caught in a much hotter place than we intended and for half an hour were under heavy shrapnel fire. I was curious to see how the youngster for he was only fourteen would act. Finally he turned to me, his black eyes snapping with excitement. "Have I your permission to go a little nearer, mon- sieur?" he asked eagerly. "I won't be gone long. I only want to get a German helmet.'* It may have been the valor of ignorance which these broad-hatted, bare-kneed boys displayed, but it was the sort of valor which characterized every Belgian soldier. There was one youngster of thirteen who was attached to an officer of the staff and who was present 40 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS at every battle of importance from the evac- uation of Brussels to the fall of Antwerp. I remember seeing him during the retreat of the Belgians from Wesemael, curled up in the ton- neau of a car and sleeping through all the turmoil and confusion. I felt like waking him up and saying sternly: "Look here, sonny, you'd better trot on home. Your mother will be worried to death about you." I believe that four Belgian boy scouts gave up their lives in the service of their country. Two were run down and killed by automobiles while on duty in Antwerp. Two others were, I understand, shot by German troops near Brussels while attempting to carry despatches through the lines. One boy scout became so adept at this sort of work that he was regularly employed by the Government to carry mes- sages through to its agents in Brussels. His exploits would provide material for a boy's book of adventure and, as a fitting conclusion, he was decorated by the King. Any one who went to Belgium with hard- and-fast ideas as to social distinctions quickly had them shattered. The fact that a man wore a private's uniform and sat behind the THE CITY OF GLOOM 41 steering-wheel of your car and respectfully touched his cap when you gave him an order did not imply that he had always been a chauffeur. Roos, who drove my car through- out my stay in Belgium, was the son of a Brussels millionaire, and at the beginning of hostilities had, as I think I have mentioned elsewhere, promptly presented his own power- ful car to the Government. The aristocracy of Belgium did not hang around the Ministry of War trying to obtain commissions. They simply donned privates' uniforms, and went into the firing-line. As a result of this whole- hearted patriotism the ranks of the Belgian army were filled with men who were members of the most exclusive clubs and were welcome guests in the highest social circles in Europe. Almost any evening during the earlier part of the war a smooth-faced youth in the uniform of a private soldier could have been seen sit- ting amid a group of friends at dinner in the Hotel St. Antoine. When an officer entered the room he stood up and clicked his heels together and saluted. He was Prince Henri de Ligne, a member of one of the oldest and most distinguished families in Belgium 42 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS and related to half the aristocracy of Europe. He, poor boy, was destined never again to fol- low the hounds or to lead a cotillon; he was killed near Herenthals with young Count de Villemont and Philippe de Zualart while en- gaged in a daring raid in an armored motor-car into the German lines for the purpose of blow- ing up a bridge. When, upon the occupation of Brussels by the Germans, the capital of Belgium was hastily transferred to Antwerp, considerable difficulty was experienced in rinding suitable accommo- dations for the staffs of the various ministries, which were housed in any buildings which happened to be available at the time. Thus, the foreign relations of the nation were di- rected from a school building in the Avenue du Commerce the Foreign Minister, Monsieur Davignon, using as his cabinet the room formerly used for lectures on physiology, the walls of which were still covered with black- boards and anatomical charts. The Grand Hotel was taken over by the Government for the accommodation of the Cabinet Ministers and their staffs, while the Ministers of State and the members of the diplomatic corps were THE CITY OF GLOOM 43 quartered at the St. Antoine. In fact, it used to be said in fun that if you got into difficulties with the police all you had to do was to get within the doors of the hotel, where you would be safe, for half of the ground floor was tech- nically British soil, being occupied by the British Legation; a portion of the second floor was used by the Russian Legation; if you dashed into a certain bedroom you could claim Roumanian protection, and in another you were, theoretically, in Greece; while on the upper floor extraterritoriality was exercised by the Republic of China. Every evening all the ministers and diplomats met in the big rose-and-ivory dining-room the white shirt- fronts of the men and the white shoulders of the women, with the uniforms of the Belgian officers and of the British, French and Russian military attaches, combining to form a wonder- fully brilliant picture. Looking on that scene, it was hard to believe that by ascending to the roof of the hotel you could see the glare of burning villages and hear the boom of German cannon. As the siege progressed and the German lines were drawn tighter, the military regulations governing life in Antwerp increased in severity. 44 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS The local papers were not permitted to print any accounts of Belgian checks or reverses, and at one time the importation of English newspapers was suspended. Sealed letters were not accepted by the post-office for any foreign countries save England, Russia and France, and even these were held four days before being forwarded. Telegrams were, of course, rigidly censored. The telephone service was suspended save for governmental purposes. At eight o'clock the trams stopped running. Save for a few ramshackle vehicles, drawn by decrepit horses, the cabs had disappeared from the streets. The city went spy-mad. If a man ordered Sauerkraut and sausage for lunch he instantly fell under suspicion. Scarcely a day passed without houses being raided and their occupants arrested on the charge of espionage. It was reported and generally believed that those whose guilt was proved were promptly executed outside the ramparts, but of this I have my doubts. The Belgians are too good-natured, too easy-going. It is probable, of course, that some spies were executed, but certainly not many. One never stirred out-of-doors in Antwerp THE CITY OF GLOOM 45 without one's papers, which had to be shown before one could gain admission to the post- office, the telegraph bureau, the banks, the railway stations, or any other public buildings. There were several varieties of "papers." There was the plain passport, which, beyond establishing your nationality, was not worth the paper it was written on. There was the permis de sejour, which was issued by the police to those who were able to prove that they had business which necessitated their remaining in the city. And finally, there was the much- prized laissez-passer, which was issued by the military government and usually bore the photograph of the person to whom it was given, which proved an open sesame wherever shown, and which, I might add, was exceedingly difficult to obtain. Only once did my laissez-passer fail me. During the final days of the siege, when the temper and endurance of the Belgian defenders were strained almost to the breaking-point, I motored out to witness the German assault on the forts near Willebroeck. With me were Captain Raymond Briggs of the United States army and Thompson. Before continuing to 46 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS the front we took the precaution of stopping at division headquarters in Boom and asking if there was any objection to our proceeding; we were informed that there was none. We had not been on the firing-line half an hour, however, before two gendarmes came tearing up in a motor-car and informed us that we were under arrest and must return with them to Boom. At division headquarters we were interrogated by a staff major whose temper was as fiery as his hair. Thompson, as was his invariable custom, was smoking a very large and very black cigar. "Take that cigar out of your mouth!" snapped the major in French. "How dare you smoke in my presence ?" "Sorry, major," said Thompson, grinning broadly, "but you'll have to talk American. I don't understand French." "Stop smiling!" roared the now infuriated ! officer. "How dare you smile when I address f you ? This is no time for smiling, sir ! This is a time of war !" Though the major was reluctantly forced to admit that our papers were in order, we were nevertheless sent to staff headquarters in THE CITY OF GLOOM 47 Antwerp guarded by two gendarmes, one of whom was the bearer of a dossier in which it was gravely recited that Captain Briggs and I had been arrested while in the company of a person calling himself Donald Thompson, who was charged by the chief of staff with having smiled and smoked a cigar in his presence. Needless to say, the whole opera-bou/e affair was promptly disavowed by the higher author- ities. I have mentioned the incident because it was the sole occasion on which I met with so much as a shadow of discourtesy from any Belgian, either soldier or civilian. I doubt if in any other country in the world in time of war, a foreigner would have been permitted to go where and when he pleased, as I was, and would have met with hospitality and kindness from every one. The citizens of Antwerp hated the Germans with a deeper and more bitter hatred, if such a thing were possible, than the people of any other part of Belgium. This was due to the fact that in no foreign city where Germans dwelt and did business were they treated with such marked hospitality and consideration as in Antwerp. They had been given franchises 48 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS and concessions and privileges of every descrip- tion; they had been showered with honors and decorations; they were welcome guests on every occasion; city streets had been named after leading German residents; time and time again, both at private dinners and public banquets, they had asserted, wine-glass in hand, their loyalty and devotion to the city which was their home. Yet, the moment oppor- tunity offered, they did not scruple to betray it. In the cellar of the house belonging to one of the most prominent German residents the police found large stores of ammunition and hundreds of rifles and German uniforms. A German company had, as a result of criminal stupidity, been awarded the contract for wir- ing the forts defending the city and when the need arose it was found that the wiring was all but worthless. A wealthy German had a magnificent country estate the gardens of which ran down to the moat of one of the outlying forts. One day he suggested to the military authorities that if they would permit him to obtain the necessary water from the moat, he would build a swimming pool in his garden for the use of the soldiers. What THE CITY OF GLOOM 49 appeared to be a generous offer was gladly accepted but when the day of action came it was found that the moat had been drained dry. In the grounds of another country place were discovered concrete emplacements for the use of the German siege-guns. Thus the German residents repaid the hospitality of their adopted city. When the war-cloud burst every German was promptly expelled from Antwerp. In a few cases the mob got out of hand and smashed the windows of some German saloons along the water-front, but no Germans were injured or mistreated. They were merely shipped, bag and baggage, across the frontier. That, in my opinion at least, is what should have been done with the entire civil population of Antwerp provided, of course, that the Gov- ernment intended to hold the city at all costs. The civilians seriously hampered the move- ments of the troops and thereby interfered with the defence; the presence of large num- bers of women and children in the city dur- ing the bombardment unquestionably caused grave anxiety to the defenders and was prob- ably one of the chief reasons for the evac- So FIGHTING IN FLANDERS uation taking place when it did; the masses of civilian fugitives who choked the roads in their mad flight from Antwerp were in large measure responsible for the capture of a considerable portion of the retreating Belgian army and for the fact that other bodies of troops were driven across the frontier and interned in Holland. So strongly was the belief that Antwerp was impregnable implanted in every Belgian's mind, however, that up to the very last not one citizen in a thousand would admit that there was a possi- bility that it could be taken. The army did not believe that it could be taken. The Gen- eral Staff did not believe that it could be taken. They were destined to have a rude and sad awakening. Ill THE DEATH IN THE AIR A eleven minutes past one o'clock on the morning of August 25 death came to Antwerp out of the air. Some one had sent a bundle of English and American newspapers to my room in the Hotel St. Antoine and I had spent the evening reading them, so that the bells of the cathedral had already chimed one o'clock when I switched off my light and opened the window. As I did so my attention was attracted by a curious humming overhead, like a million bumble- bees. I leaned far out of the window, and as I did so an indistinct mass, which gradually resolved itself into something resembling a gigantic black cigar, became plainly apparent against the purple-velvet sky. I am not good at estimating altitudes, but I should say that i when I first caught sight of it it was not more than a thousand feet above my head and my room was on the top floor of the hotel, re- member. As it drew nearer the noise, which had at first reminded me of a swarm of angry 51 52 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS bees, grew louder, until it sounded like an automobile with the muffler open. Despite the darkness there was no doubting what it was. It was a German Zeppelin. Even as I looked something resembling a falling star curved across the sky. An instant later came a rending, shattering crash that shook the hotel to its foundations, the walls of my room rocked and reeled about me, and for a breathless moment I thought that the build- ing was going to collapse. Perhaps thirty seconds later came another splitting explosion, and another, and then another ten in all each, thank Heaven, a little farther removed. It was all so sudden, so utterly unexpected, that it must have been quite a minute before I realized that the monstrous thing hovering in the darkness overhead was one of the diri- gibles of which we had read and talked so much, and that it was actually raining death , upon the sleeping city from the sky. I suppose it was blind instinct that caused me to run to the door and down the corridor with the idea of getting into the street, never stopping to reason, of course, that there was no protection in the street from Zeppelins. But before I THE DEATH IN THE AIR 53 had gone a dozen paces I had my nerves once more in hand. "Perhaps it isn't a Zeppelin, after all," I argued to myself. "I may have been dreaming. And how perfectly ridiculous I should look if I were to dash down-stairs in my pajamas and find that nothing had hap- pened. At least I'll go back and put some clothes on." And I did. No fireman, respond- ing to a night alarm, ever dressed quicker. As I ran through the corridors the doors of bed- rooms opened and sleepy-eyed, tousle-headed diplomatists and Government officials called after me to ask if the Germans were bombard- ing the city. "They are," I answered, without stopping. There was no time to explain that for the first time in history a city was being bombarded from the air. I found the lobby rapidly filling with scan- tily clad guests, whose teeth were visibly chat- tering. Guided by the hotel manager and accompanied by half a dozen members of the diplomatic corps in pajamas, I raced up-stairs to a sort of observatory on the hotel roof. I remember that one attache of the British Legation, ordinarily a most dignified person, 54 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS had on some sort of a night-robe of purple silk and that when he started to climb the iron ladder of the fire-escape he looked for all the world like a burglarious suffragette. By the time we reached the roof of the hotel Belgian high-angle and machine guns were stabbing the darkness with spurts of flame, the troops of the garrison were blazing away with rifles, and the gendarmes in the streets were shooting wildly with their revolvers: the noise was deafening. Oblivious of the con- sternation and confusion it had caused, the Zeppelin, after letting fall a final bomb, slowly rose and disappeared in the upp'er darkness. The destruction wrought by the German projectiles was almost incredible. The first shell, which I had seen fall, struck a building in the Rue de Bourse, barely two hundred yards in a straight line from my window. A hole was not merely blown through the roof, as would have been the case with a shell from a field-gun, but the three upper stories simply crumbled, disintegrated, came crashing down in an avalanche of brick and stone and plaster, as though a Titan had hit it with a sledge- hammer. Another shell struck in the middle THE DEATH IN THE AIR 55 of the Poids Public, or public weighing-place, which is about the size of Gramercy Park in New York. It blew a hole in the cobblestone pavement large enough to bury a horse in; one policeman on duty at the far end of the square was instantly killed and another had both legs blown off. But this was not all nor nearly all. Six people sleeping in houses fronting on the square were killed in their beds and a dozen others were more or less seriously wounded. Every building facing on the square was either wholly or partially demolished, the steel splinters of the projectile tearing their way through the thick brick walls as easily as a lead-pencil is jabbed through a sheet of paper. And, as a result of the terrific concussion, every house within a block of the square in every direction had its windows broken. On no battle-field have I ever seen so horrible a sight as that which turned me weak and nauseated when I entered one of the shattered houses and made my way, over heaps of fallen debris, to a room where a young woman had been sleep- ing. She had literally been blown to frag- ments. The floor, the walls, the ceiling, were splotched with well, it's enough to say that 56 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS that woman's remains could only have been collected with a shovel, and I'm not speaking flippantly either. I have purposely dwelt upon these details, revolting as they are, because I wish to drive home the fact that the only victims of this air raid on Antwerp were inno- cent non-combatants. Another shell struck the roof of a physician's house in the fashionable Rue des Escrimeurs, killing two maids who were sleeping in a room on the upper floor. A shell fell in a garden in the Rue von Bary, terribly wounding a man and his wife. A little child was mangled by a shell which struck a house in the Rue de la Justice. Another shell fell in the barracks in the Rue Falcon, killing one inmate and wound- ing two others. By a fortunate coincidence the regiment which had been quartered in the barracks had left for the front on the previous day. A woman who was awakened by the first explosion and leaned from her window to see what was happening had her head blown off. In all ten people were killed, six of whom were women, and upwards of forty wounded, two of them so terribly that they afterwards died. There is very little doubt that a deliber- 8, -'-'-; The effect of one of the bombs dropped from a Zeppelin on Antwerp. 'The steel splinters tore their way through the thick brick walls as easily as a lead-pencil is jabbed through a sheet of paper." THE DEATH IN THE AIR 57 ate attempt was made to kill the royal family, the General Staff, and the members of the Government, one shell bursting within a hun- dred yards of the royal palace, where the King and Queen were sleeping, and another within two hundred yards of staff headquarters and the Hotel St. Antoine. As a result of this night of horror, Antwerp, to use an inelegant but descriptive expression, developed a violent case of the jimjams. The next night and every night thereafter until the Germans came in and took the city, she thought she saw things; not green rats and pink snakes, but large, sausage-shaped balloons with bombs dropping from them. The military author- ities for the city was under martial law screwed down the lid so tight that even the most rabid prohibitionists and social reformers murmured. As a result of the precautionary measures which were taken, Antwerp, with its four hundred thousand inhabitants, became about as cheerful a place of residence as a country cemetery on a rainy evening. At eight o'clock every street light was turned off, every shop and restaurant and cafe closed, every window darkened. If a light was seen in a 58 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS window after eight o'clock the person who occupied that room was in grave danger of being arrested for signalling to the enemy. My room, which was on the third floor of the hotel, was so situated that its windows could not be seen from the street, and hence I was not as particular about lowering the shades as I should have been. The second night after the Zeppelin raid the manager came bursting into my room. "Quick, Mr. Powell," he called excitedly, "pull down your shade. The observers in the cathedral tower have just sent word that your windows are lighted and the police are down-stairs to find out what it means." The darkness of London and Paris was a joke beside the darkness of Antwerp. It was so dark in the narrow, winding streets, bordered by ancient houses, that when, as was my custom, I went to the telegraph office with my despatches after dinner, I had to feel my way with a cane, like a blind man. To make conditions more intolerable, if such a thing were possible, cordons of sentries were thrown around those buildings under whose roofs the ( members of the Government slept, so that if THE DEATH IN THE AIR 59 one returned after nightfall he was greeted by a harsh command to halt, and a sentry held a rifle muzzle against his breast while another ' sentry, by means of a dark lantern, scrutinized his papers. Save for the sentries, the streets" were deserted, for, as the places of amusement and the eating places and drinking places were closed, there was no place for the people to go except to bed. I was reminded of the man who told his wife that he came home because all the other places were closed. I have heard it said that Antwerp was indifferent to its fate, but it made no such impression on me. Never have I lived in such an atmosphere of depression and gloom. Except around the St. Antoine at the lunch and dinner hours and in the cafes just before nightfall did one see anything which was even a second cousin to jollity. The people did not smile. They went about with grave and anxious faces. In fact, outside of the places ' I have mentioned, one rarely heard a laugh. The people who sat at the round iron tables on the sidewalks in front of the cafes drinking i their light wines and beer no spirits were permitted to be sold sat in silence and with 60 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS solemn faces. God knows, there was little enough for them to smile about. Their nation was being slowly strangled. Three quarters of its soil was under the heel of the invader. An alien flag, a hated flag, flew over their capital. Their King and their Government were fugitives, moving from place to place as a vagrant moves on at the approach of a policeman. Men who, a month before, were prosperous shopkeepers and tradesmen were virtual bankrupts, not knowing where the next hundred-franc note was coming from. Other men had seen their little flower-surrounded homes in the suburbs razed to the ground that an approaching enemy might find no cover. Though the shops were open, they had no customers, for the people had no money, or, if they had money, they were hoarding it against the days when they might be homeless fugitives. No, there was not very much to smile about in Antwerp. There were amusing incidents, of course. If one recognizes humor when he sees it he can find it in almost any situation. After the first Zeppelin attack the management of the St. Antoine fitted up bedrooms in the cellars. THE DEATH IN THE AIR 61 A century or more ago the St. Antoine was not a hotel but a monastery, and its cellars are all that the cellars of a monastery ought to be thick-walled and damp and musty. Yet these subterranean suites were in as great demand among the diplomatists as are tables in the palm room of the Savoy during the season. From my bedroom window, which overlooked the court, I could see apprehensive guests cautiously emerging from their cellar chambers in the early morning. It reminded me of woodchucks coming out of their holes. As the siege progressed and the German guns were pushed nearer to the city, those who lived in what might be termed "conspicuous" localities began to seek other quarters. "I'm going to change hotels to-day," I heard a man remark to a friend. "Why?" inquired the other. "Because I am within thirty yards of the cathedral," was the answer. The towering spire of the famous cathedral is, you must understand, the most conspicuous thing in Antwerp on clear days you can see it from twenty miles away and to live in its imme- diate vicinity during a bombardment of the 62 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS city was equivalent to taking shelter under the only tree in a field during a heavy thunder- * storm. i Two days before the bombardment began there was a meeting of the American residents such of them as still remained in the city at the leading club. About a dozen of us in all sat down to dinner. The purpose of the gathering was to discuss the attitude which the Americans should adopt towards the German officers, for it was known that the fall of the city was imminent. I remember that the sense of the meeting was that we should treat the helmeted intruders with frigid polite- ness I think that was the term which, trans- lated, meant that we were not to buy them drinks or offer them cigars. Of the twelve of us who sat around the table that night, there are only two Mr. Manly Whedbee and myself who remained to witness the German occupation. That the precautions taken against Zeppelins were by no means overdone was proved by the total failure of the second aerial raid on Ant- werp, in the latter part of September, when a dirigible again sailed over the city under cover of the darkness. Owing to the total THE DEATH IN THE AIR 63 absence of street lights, however, the dirigible's crew were evidently unable to get their bear- ings, for the half dozen bombs that they discharged fell in the outskirts of the city without causing any loss of life or doing any serious damage. This time, moreover, the Belgians were quite prepared the fire of their "sky artillery," guided by search-lights, mak- ing things exceedingly uncomfortable for the Germans. I have heard it stated by Belgian officers and others that the bombs were dropped from the dirigibles by an ingenious arrangement which made the air-ship itself comparatively safe from harm and at the same time rendered the aim of its bombman much more accurate. Accord^ ing to them, the dirigible comes to a stop or as near a stop as possible above the city or fortification which it wishes to attack, at a height out of range of either artillery or rifle fire. Then, by means of a steel cable a thou- sand feet or more in length, it lowers a small wire cage just large enough to contain a man and a supply of bombs, this cage being suffi- ciently armored so that it is proof against rifle-bullets. At the same time it affords so 6 4 tiny a mark that the chances of its being hit by artillery fire are insignificant. If it should be struck, moreover, the air-ship itself would still be unharmed and only one man would be lost, and when he fell his supply of bombs would fall with him. The Zeppelin, pre- sumably equipped with at least two cages and cables, might at once lower another bomb- thrower. I do not pretend to say whether this ingenious contrivance is used by the Germans. Certainly the Zeppelin which I saw in action had nothing of the kind, nor did it drop its projectiles promiscuously, as one would drop a stone, but apparently discharged them from a bomb tube. Though the Zeppelin raids proved wholly ineffective, so far as their effect on troops and fortifications were concerned, the German aviators introduced some novel tricks in aerial warfare which were as practical as they were ingenious. During the battle of Vilvorde, for example, and throughout the attacks on the Antwerp forts, German dirigibles hovered at a safe height over the Belgian positions and directed the fire of the German gunners with remarkable success. The aerial observers fee 60 W 3 i-l THE DEATH IN THE AIR 65 watched, through powerful glasses, the effect of the German shells and then, by means of a large disk which was swung at the end of a line and could be raised or lowered at will, signalled as need be in code "higher lower right left" and thus guided the gunners who were, of course, unable to see their mark or the effect of their fire until almost every shot was a hit. At Vilvorde, as a result of this aerial fire-control system, I saw the German artillery, posted out of sight behind a railway embankment, get the range of a retreating column of Belgian infantry and with a dozen well-placed shots practically wipe it out of existence. So perfect was the German system of observation and fire control during the final attack on the Antwerp defences that whenever the Belgians or British moved a regiment or a battery the aerial observers instantly detected it and a perfect storm of shells was directed against the new position. Throughout the operations around Antwerp, the Taubes, as the German aeroplanes are called because of their fancied resemblance to a dove, repeatedly performed daring feats of reconnoissance. On one occasion, while I was 66 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS with the General Staff at Lierre, one of these German Taubes sailed directly over the Hotel de Ville, which was being used as staff head- quarters. It so happened that King Albert was standing in the street, smoking one of the seven-for-a-franc Belgian cigars to which he was partial. "The Germans call it a dove, eh ?" remarked the King, as he looked up at the passing aircraft. "Well, it looks to me more like a hawk." A few days before the fall of Antwerp a Taube flew directly over the city in the early afternoon, dropping thousands of proclamations printed in both French and Flemish and signed by the commander of the investing forces, pointing out to the inhabitants the futility of resistance, asserting that in fighting Germany they were playing Russia's game, and urging them to lay down their arms. The aeroplane was greeted by a storm of shrapnel from the high-angle guns mounted on the fortifications, the only effect of which, however, was to kill two unoffending citizens who were standing in the streets and were struck by the fragments of the falling shells. Most people seem to have the impression that it is as easy for an aviator to see what is THE DEATH IN THE AIR 67 happening on the ground beneath him as though he were looking down from the roof of a high building. Under ordinary conditions, when one can skim above the surface of the earth at a height of a few hundred feet, this is quite true, but it is quite a different matter when one is flying above hostile troops who are blazing away at him with rifles and machine guns. During reconnoissance work the airmen generally are compelled to ascend to an altitude of a mile or a mile and a quarter, which makes observation extremely difficult, as small object^, even with the aid of the strongest glasses, assume unfamiliar shapes and become fore- shortened. If, in order to obtain a better view, they venture to fly at a lower height, they are likely to be greeted by a hail of rifle fire from soldiers in the trenches. The Belgian aviators with whom I talked assured me that they feared rifle fire more than bursting shrapnel, as the fire of a regiment, when con- centrated even on so elusive an object as an aeroplane, proves far more deadly than shells. The Belgians made more use than any other nation of motor-cars. When war was declared 68 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS one of the first steps taken by the military authorities was to commandeer every motor- car, every motor-cycle, and every litre of petrol in the kingdom. As a result they depended almost entirely upon motor-driven vehicles for their military transport, which was, I might add, extremely efficient. In fact, we could always tell when we were approaching the front by the amazing number of motor-cars which lined the roads for miles in the rear of each division. Anything that had four wheels and a motor to drive them diminutive American run- abouts, slim, low-hung racing cars, luxurious limousines with coronets painted on the panels, delivery cars bearing the names of shops in Antwerp and Ghent and Brussels, lumbering motor-trucks, hotel omnibuses all met the same fate, which consisted in being daubed with elephant-gray paint, labelled "S.M." (Service Militaire) in staring white letters, and started for the front, usually in charge of a wholly inexperienced driver. It made an automobile lover groan to see the way some of those cars were treated. But they did the business. They averaged something like twelve miles an THE DEATH IN THE AIR 69 hour which is remarkable time for army transport and, strangely enough, very few of them broke down. If they did there was always an automobile des reparations promptly on hand to repair the damage. Before the war began the Belgian army had no army trans- port worthy of the name; before the forts at Liege had been silenced it had as efficient a one as any nation in Europe. The headquarters of the motor-car branch of the army was at the Pare des Automobiles Militaires, on the Red Star quays in Antwerp. Here several hundred cars were always kept in reserve, and here was collected an enormous store of automobile supplies and sundries. The scene under the long, low sheds, with their corrugated-iron roofs, always reminded me of the Automobile Show in Madison Square Garden. After a car had once been placed at your disposal by the Government, getting supplies for it was merely a question of signing bons. Obtaining extra equipment for my car was Roos's chief amusement. Tires, tools, spare parts, horns, lamps, trunks all you had to do was to scrawl your name at the foot of a printed form and they were promptly handed 70 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS over. When I first went to Belgium I was given a sixty-horse-power touring-car, and when the weather turned unpleasant I asked for and was given a limousine that was big enough to sleep in, and when I found this too clumsy, Comte de Gruen, the commandant of the Pare des Automobiles, obligingly exchanged it for a ninety-horse-power berline. They were most accommodating, those Belgians. I am sorry to say that my berline, which was the envy of every one in Antwerp, was eventually captured by the Germans. Though both the French and the Germans had for a number of years been experimenting with armored cars of various patterns, the Belgians, who had never before given the subject serious consideration, were the first to evolve and to send into action a really practical vehicle of this description. The earlier armored cars used by the Belgians were built at the great Minerva factory in Antwerp and consisted of a circular turret, high enough so that only the head and shoulders of the man operating the machine gun were exposed, covered with half-inch steel plates and mounted on an ordinary chassis. After THE DEATH IN THE AIR 71 the disastrous affair near Herenthals, in which Prince Henri de Ligne was mortally wounded while engaged in a raid into the German lines for the purpose of blowing up bridges, it was seen that the crew of the automitrailleuses, as the armored cars were called, was insufficiently protected, and, to remedy this, a movable steel dome, with an opening for the muzzle of the machine gun, was superimposed on the turret. These grim vehicles, which jeered at bullets, and were proof even against shrapnel, quickly became a nightmare to the Germans. Driven by the most reckless racing drivers in Belgium, manned by crews of dare-devil youngsters, and armed with machine guns which poured out lead at the rate of a thousand shots a minute, these wheeled fortresses would tear at will into the German lines, cut up an outpost or wipe out a cavalry patrol, dynamite a bridge or a tunnel or a culvert, and be back j in the Belgian lines again almost before the enemy realized what had happened. I myself witnessed an example of the cool 'daring of these mitrailleuse drivers during the fighting around Malines. I was standing on a railway embankment watching the withdrawal 72 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS under heavy fire of the last Belgian troops, when an armored car, the lean muzzle of its machine gun peering from its turret, tore past me at fifty miles an hour, spitting a murderous spray of lead as it bore down on the advancing Germans. But when within a few hundred yards of the German line the car slackened speed and stopped. Its petrol was exhausted. Instantly one of the crew was out in the road and, under cover of the fire from the machine gun, began to refill the tank. Though bullets were kicking up spurts of dust in the road or ping-pinging against the steel turret he would not be hurried. I, who was watching the scene through my field-glasses, was much more excited than he was. Then, when the tank was filled, the car refused to back ! It was a big machine and the narrow road was bordered on either side by deep ditches, but by a miracle the driver was able and just able to turn the car round. Though by this time the German gunners had the range and shrapnel was bursting all about him, he was as cool as though he were turning a limousine in the width of Riverside Drive. As the car straight- ened out for its retreat, the Belgians gave THE DEATH IN THE AIR 73 the Germans a jeering screech from their horn and a parting blast of lead from their machine gun and went racing Antwerpwards. It is, by the way, a curious and interesting fact that the machine gun used in both the Belgian and German armored cars, and which is one of the most effective weapons produced by the war, was repeatedly offered to the American War Department by its inventor, Major Isaac Newton Lewis, of the United States army, and was as repeatedly rejected by the officials at Washington. At last, in despair of receiving recognition in his own country, he sold it to Germany and Belgium. The Lewis gun, which is air-cooled and weighs only twenty-nine pounds less than half the weight of a soldier's equipment fires a thou- sand shots a minute. In the fighting around Sempst I saw trees as large round as a man's thigh literally cut down by the stream of lead from these weapons. All of which but proves the truth of the Biblical assertion that "a prophet is not without honor save in his own country." The inventor of the Lewis gun was not the only American who played an inconspicuous 74 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS but none the less important part in the War of Nations. A certain American corporation doing business in Belgium placed its huge Antwerp plant and the services of its corps of skilled engineers at the service of the Govern- ment, though I might add that this fact was kept carefully concealed, being known to only a handful of the higher Belgian officials. This concern made shells and other ammunition for the Belgian army; it furnished aeroplanes and machine guns; it constructed miles of barbed- wire entanglements and connected those en- tanglements with the city lighting system; one of its officers went on a secret mission to England and brought back with him a supply of cordite, not to mention six large-calibre guns which he smuggled through Dutch territorial waters hidden in the steamer's coal bunkers. And, as though all this were not enough, the Belgian Government confided to this foreign corporation the minting of the na- tional currency. For obvious reasons I am not at liberty to mention the name of this concern, though it is known to practically every person in the United States, each month checks being sent to the parent concern by eight hundred THE DEATH IN THE AIR 75 thousand people in New York alone. Inci- dentally it publishes the most widely read volume in the world. I wish that I might tell you the name of this concern. Upon second thought, I think I will. It is the Bell Telephone Company. IV UNDER THE GERMAN EAGLE WHEN, upon the approach of the Ger- mans to Brussels, the Government and the members of the diplomatic corps fled to Antwerp, the American Minister, Mr. Brand Whitlock, did not accompany them. In view of the peculiar position occupied by the United States as the only Great Power not in- volved in hostilities, he felt, and, as it proved, quite rightly, that he could be of more service to Belgium and to Brussels and to the cause of humanity in general by remaining behind. There remained with him the secretary of le- gation, Mr. Hugh S. Gibson. Mr. Whitlock's reasons for remaining in Brussels were two- fold. In the first place, there were a large num- ber of English and Americans, both residents and tourists, who had been either unable or un- willing to leave the city, and who, he felt, were entitled to diplomatic protection. Secondly, the behavior of the German troops in other Belgian cities had aroused grave fears of what 76 UNDER THE GERMAN EAGLE 77 would happen when they entered Brussels, and it was generally felt that the presence of the American Minister might deter them from com- mitting the excesses and outrages which up to that time had characterized their advance. It was no secret that Germany was desperately anxious to curry favor with the United States, and it was scarcely likely, therefore, that houses would be sacked and burnt, civilians executed, and women violated under the disapproving eyes of the American representative. This surmise proved to be well founded. The Germans did not want Mr. Whitlock in Brussels, and nothing would have pleased them better than to have had him depart and leave them to their own devices, but, so long as he blandly ignored their hints that his room was preferable to his company and persisted in sitting tight, they submitted to his surveillance with the best grace possible and behaved them- selves as punctiliously as a dog that has been permitted to come into a parlor. After the civil administration had been established, how- ever, and Belgium had become, in theory at least, a German province, Mr. Whitlock was told quite plainly that the kingdom to which he 78 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS was accredited had ceased to exist as an in- dependent nation, and that Anglo-American affairs in Belgium could henceforward be in- trusted, to the American Ambassador at Ber- lin. But Mr. Whitlock, who had received his training in shirt-sleeve diplomacy as Socialist Mayor of Toledo, Ohio, was as impervious to German suggestions as he had been to the threats and pleadings of party politicians, and told Baron von der Goltz, the German Governor, politely but quite firmly, that he did not take his orders from Berlin but from Washington. "Gott in Himmel!" exclaimed the Germans, shrugging their shoulders despairingly, "what is to be done with such a man ?" Before the Germans had been in occupation of Brussels a fortnight the question of food for the poorer classes became a serious and pressing problem. The German armies, in their onset toward the west, had swept the Belgian coun- tryside bare; the products of the farms and gardens in the immediate vicinity of the city had been commandeered for the use of the garrison, and the spectre of starvation was al- ready beginning to cast its dread shadow over Brussels. Mr. Whitlock acted with prompt- UNDER THE GERMAN EAGLE 79 ness and decision. He sent Americans who had volunteered their services to Holland to purchase foodstuffs, and at the same time informed the German commander that he ex- pected these foodstuffs to be admitted with- out hindrance. The German replied that he could not comply with this request without first communicating with his Imperial master, whereupon he was told, in effect, that the American Government would consider him personally responsible if the foodstuffs were delayed or diverted for military use and a famine ensued in consequence. The firmness of Mr. Whitlock's attitude had its effect, for at seven o'clock the next morning he received word that his wishes would be complied with. As a result of the German occupation, Brussels, with its six hundred thousand inhabi- tants, was as completely cut off from communi- cation with the outside world as though it were on an island in the South Pacific. The postal, telegraph and telephone services were suspended; the railways were blocked with troop trains moving westward; the roads were filled from ditch to ditch with troops ind trans- port wagons; and so tightly were flic lines 80 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS drawn between that portion of Belgium occupied by the Germans and that still held by the Belgians, that those daring souls who attempted to slip through the cordons of sentries did so at peril of their lives. It sounds almost incredible that a great city could be so effectually isolated, yet so it was. Even the Cabinet Ministers and other officials who had accompanied the Government in its flight to Antwerp were unable to learn what had befallen the families which they had in many cases left behind them. After nearly three weeks had passed without word from the American Legation, the Department of State cabled the American Consul-General at Antwerp that some means of communicating with Mr. Whitlock must be found. Happening to be in the Consulate when the message was received, I placed my services and my car at the disposal of the Consul-General, who promptly accepted them. Upon learning of my proposed jaunt into the enemy's lines, a friend, Mr. M. Manly Whedbee, the director of the Belgian branch of the British-American Tobacco Company, offered to accompany me, and as he is as cool- headed and courageous and companionable as UNDER THE GERMAN EAGLE 81 any one I know, and as he knew as much about driving the car as I did for it was obviously impossible to take my Belgian driver I was only too glad to have him along. It was, in- deed, due to Mr. Whedbee's foresight in taking along a huge quantity of cigarettes for distribution among the soldiers, that we were able to escape from Brussels. But more of that episode hereafter. When the Consul-General asked General Dufour, the military Governor of Antwerp, to issue us a safe conduct through the Belgian lines, that gruff old soldier at first refused flatly, asserting that, as the German outposts had been firing on cars bearing the Red Cross flag, there was no assurance that they would respect one bearing the Stars and Stripes. The urgency of the matter being explained to him, however, he reluctantly issued the necessary laissez- passer, though intimating quite plainly that our mission would probably end in providing "more work for the undertaker, another little job for the casket-maker," and that he washed his hands of all responsibility for our fate. But by two American flags mounted on the wind-shield, and the explanatory legends "Service Consu- 82 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS laire des Etats-Unis d'Amerique" and " Ameri- kanischer Consular dienst" painted in staring letters on the hood, we hoped, however, to make it quite clear to Germans and Belgians alike that we were protected by the international game-laws so far as shooting us was concerned. Now, the disappointing thing about our trip was that we didn't encounter any Uhlans. Every one had warned us so repeatedly about Uhlans that we fully expected to find them, with their pennoned lances and their square- topped schapkas, lurking behind every hedge, and when they did not come spurring out to intercept us we were greatly disappointed. It was like making a journey to the polar regions and seeing no Esquimaux. The smart young cavalry officer who bade us good-by at the Belgian outposts, warned us to keep our eyes open for them and said, rather mournfully, I thought, that he only hoped they would give us time to explain who we were before they opened fire on us. "They are such hasty fellows, these Uhlans," said he, "always shoot- ing first and making inquiries afterward." As a matter of fact, the only Uhlan we saw on the entire trip was riding about Brussels in a UNDER THE GERMAN EAGLE 83 cab, smoking a large porcelain pipe and with his spurred boots resting comfortably on the cushions. Though we crept along as circumspectly as a motorist who knows that he is being trailed by a motor-cycle policeman, peering behind farmhouses and hedges and into the depths of thickets and expecting any moment to hear a gruff command, emphasized by the bang of a carbine, it was not until we were at the very outskirts of Aerschot that we encountered the Germans. There were a hundred of them so cleverly ambushed behind a hedge that we would never have suspected their presence had we not caught the glint of sunlight on their rifle barrels. We should not have gotten much nearer, in any event, for they had a wire neatly strung across the road at just the right height to take us under the chins. When we were within a hundred yards of the hedge an officer in a trailing gray cloak stepped into the middle of the road and held up his hand. "Halt!" I jammed on the brakes so suddenly that we nearly went through the wind-shield. "Get out of the automobile and stand well 84 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS away from it," the officer commanded in German. We got out very promptly. "One of you advance alone, with his hands up." I advanced alone, but not with my hands up. It is such an undignified position. I had that shivery feeling chasing up and down my spine which came from knowing that I was covered by a hundred rifles, and that if I made a move which seemed suspicious to the men behind those rifles, they would instantly trans- form me into a sieve. "Are you English?" the officer demanded, none too pleasantly. "No, American," said I. "Oh, that's all right," said he, his manner instantly thawing. "I know America well," he continued, "Atlantic City and Asbury Park and Niagara Falls and Coney Island. I have seen all of your famous places." Imagine, if you please, standing in the middle of a Belgian highway, surrounded by German soldiers who looked as though they would rather shoot you than not, discussing the relative merits of the hotels at Atlantic City, and which had the best dining-car service, the Pennsyl- vania or the New York Central ! UNDER THE GERMAN EAGLE 5 I learned from the officer, who proved to be an exceedingly agreeable fellow, that had we advanced ten feet further after the command to halt was given, we should probably have been planted in graves dug in a near-by potato field, as only an hour before our arrival a Belgian mitrailleuse car had torn down the road with its machine gun squirting a stream of lead, and had smashed straight through the German line, killing three men and wounding a dozen others. They were burying them when we appeared. When our big gray ma- chine hove in sight they not unnaturally took us for another armored car and prepared to give us a warm reception. It was a lucky thing for us that our brakes worked quickly. We were the first foreigners to see Aerschot, or rather what was left of Aerschot since it had been sacked and burned by the Germans. A few days before Aerschot had been a pros- perous and happy town of ten thousand people, t When we saw it it was but a heap of smoking ruins, garrisoned by a battalion of German soldiers, and with its population consisting of half a hundred white-faced women. In many parts of the world I have seen many terrible 86 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS and revolting things, but nothing so ghastly, so horrifying as Aerschot. Quite two-thirds of the houses had been burned and showed un- mistakable signs of having been sacked by a maddened soldiery before they were burned. Everywhere were the ghastly evidences. Doors had been smashed in with rifle-butts and boot- heels; windows had been broken; furniture had been wantonly destroyed; pictures had been torn from the walls; mattresses had been ripped open with bayonets in search of valuables; drawers had been emptied upon the floors; the outer walls of the houses were spattered with blood and pock-marked with bullets; the sidewalks were slippery with broken wine- bottles; the streets were strewn with women's clothing. It needed no one to tell us the details of that orgy of blood and lust. The story was so plainly written that any one could read it. For a mile we drove the car slowly between the blackened walls of fire-gutted buildings. This was no accidental conflagration, mind you, for scattered here and there were houses which stood undamaged and in every such case there was scrawled with chalk upon their doors UNDER THE GERMAN EAGLE 87 "Gute leute. Nicht zu brennen. Nicht zu plun- dern" (Good people. Do not burn. Do not plunder.) The Germans went about the work of house- burning as systematically as they did every- thing else. They had various devices for starting conflagrations, all of them effective. At Aerschot and Louvain they broke the windows of the houses and threw in sticks which had been soaked in oil and dipped in sulphur. Elsewhere they used tiny black tablets, about the size of cough lozenges, made of some highly inflammable composition, to which they touched a match. At Termonde, which they destroyed in spite of the fact that the inhabitants had evacuated the city before their arrival, they used a motor-car equipped with a large tank for petrol, a pump, a hose, and a spraying-nozzle. The car was run slowly through the streets, one soldier working the pump and another spraying the fronts of the houses. Then they set fire to them. Oh, yes, they were very methodical about it all, those Germans. Despite the scowls of the soldiers, I at- tempted to talk with some of the women hud- 88 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS died in front of a bakery waiting for a dis- tribution of bread, but the poor creatures were too terror-stricken to do more than stare at us with wide, beseeching eyes. Those eyes will always haunt me. I wonder if they do not sometimes haunt the Germans. But a little episode that occurred as we were leaving the city did more than anything else to bring home the horror of it all. We passed a little girl of nine or ten and I stopped the car to ask the way. Instantly she held both hands above her head and began to scream for mercy. When we had given her some chocolate and money, and had assured her that we were not Germans, but Americans and friends, she ran like a frightened deer. That little child, with her fright-wide eyes and her hands raised in sup- plication, was in herself a terrible indictment of the Germans. There are, as might be expected, two versions of the happenings which precipitated that night of horrors in Aerschot. The German version I had it from the German com- mander himself is to the effect that after the German troops had entered Aerschot, the Chief of Staff and some of the officers were : *J -o t) 7: *0 g O r across an open field and blazing away as fast as they can work their rifles; with batteries in their immediate rear crashing out death 144 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS and destruction at five-second intervals; the sky filled with the fleecy patches of cotton-wool which are bursting shrapnel; waves of infantry rolling forward in an attempt to carry the trenches with the bayonet; men falling every- where; the fields carpeted with dead and dying men; orderlies and aides-de-camp dashing here and there on foam-flecked horses; aeroplanes circling overhead and dropping occasional bombs; the crash of the field-guns, the rattle of musketry, the cheers of the soldiers, the orders of officers, and the blare of bugles combining to make a racket which splits the ear-drums. Now, as a matter of fact, that is not what happens at all. In the first place, the noise, though loud, is by no means deafening. (When a shell bursts in your immediate vicinity it is, of course, a different matter.) In the second place, there is no confusion. Each man has his work to do, and he does it with as little fuss as possible. Imagine, if you please, a line of men crouching resignedly in the advance trenches and, stretching in front of them, what looks like an absolutely deserted countryside. It is not deserted, however, as a man instantly discovers if he incautiously raises his head an M c O ON THE BELGIAN BATTLE-LINE 145 inch or so above the earthen parapet or wrig- gles past a spot on which a German sharp- shooter has had his rifle trained for hours. Every few seconds a shell which does not kill shrieks and moans overhead, to explode some- where in the rear, and occasionally a shell which does kill drops right into the trenches and turns them into a shambles. But there is no glory, mind you, no flag-waving, no hip-hurrah- and-here-we-go business, nothing even remotely approaching the spectacular. Dismiss that from your mind once and for all. A few hundred yards back of the trenches are the reserves, usually sheltered by woods or farm-buildings or hedges, the men lying about on the ground smoking and yawning and yarn- ing as unconcernedly as though they were mill-hands waiting for the one o'clock whistle to blow. A battery comes up at a jog-trot not at the mad gallop which the war artists are so fond of depicting and unlimbers in a near-by beet field. The observation ladder, looking like a huge camera tripod, is unstrapped and raised, and an officer cautiously ascends it and peers off across the, countryside through his field- 146 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS glasses. The gunners, looking very much bored with life and heartily sick of the whole business, are grouped about their pieces in the positions prescribed by the regulations. There is no excitement and no enthusiasm. Finally, the officer finds what he has been searching for, a junior officer takes a church tower or a wind- mill in the rear of the battery as a bench-mark, makes a few mathematical calculations, and calls the range. The officer in command of the battery quietly gives the order to fire; a sergeant who has been standing with upraised arm brings his arm down sharply, like a sema- phore; there are four splitting crashes one after another unless they are firing salvoes four stabs of flame, four lean gray barrels vio- lently recoiling, four wisps of smoke as the breeches are thrown open and the four hot and smoking shells replaced by four new and gleam- ing projectiles and then the same thing all over again. The gunners show no more ex- citement or emotion than miners who are set- ting off blasts; the officers are as preoccupied with their mathematical calculations as though they were engineers building a railway. No one takes the slightest interest in what sue- ON THE BELGIAN BATTLE-LINE 147 cess has attended their efforts; probably no one but the captain knows. Yet four or five or six miles away in the streets of that village whose church spire rises above the tree tops, or behind that screen of woods, or in the trenches which are on the other side of that hill, men are falling dead, or dying, or horribly wounded, beneath the fleecy patches which fol- low every crash of the guns. In the sketches of battles printed in the illus- trated papers, the sky is almost invariably filled with the white puffs which are bursting shrapnel. Now, that means either that the gunners are firing at dirigibles or aeroplanes, or, what is much more likely, that their gunnery is atrociously bad. A shell that bursts in the sky does no harm to any one. In theory, at least, shrapnel, to attain the maximum of deadliness, should burst at a height above the ground equivalent to three mills of the range a mill being one thousandth of the distance. If, therefore, a battery is firing at, say, six thousand yards, the shells should burst eighteen yards above the ground. These false conceptions of modern warfare have resulted in creating a false picture of the i 4 8 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS type of soldiers that are wanted. What is wanted is ordinary men, trained to shoot and, above all else, trained to obey orders; men who can sit for days and nights in sodden clothing in sodden trenches, with indifferent and often insufficient food, waiting patiently, helplessly, for the death which may or may not come. Pit five hundred day-laborers men who are accustomed to performing hard manual labor in all kinds of weather against double that number of sportsmen and college men, and it is dollars to dimes that the laborers would win, not because they would be any braver, but because they would be accustomed to fa- tigue and privation and unending hard work, which, after all, is what this war consists of. After the German occupation of Brussels, the first engagement of sufficient magnitude to be termed a battle took place on August 25 and 26 in the Sempst-Elewyt-Eppeghem- Vilvorde region, midway between Brussels and Malines. The Belgians had in action four divisions, totaling about eighty thousand men, opposed to which was a considerably heavier force of Germans. To get a clear conception of the battle one must picture a fifty-foot-high ON THE BELGIAN BATTLE-LINE 149 railway embankment, its steeply sloping sides heavily wooded, stretching its length across a fertile, smiling countryside like a monstrous green snake. On this line, in time of peace, the bloc trains made the journey from Antwerp to Brussels in less than an hour. Malines, with its historic buildings and its famous cathedral, lies on one side of this line and the village of Vilvorde on the other, five miles separating them. On the 25th the Belgians, believing the Brussels garrison to have been seriously weakened and the German communi- cations poorly guarded, moved out in force from the shelter of the Antwerp forts and assumed a vigorous offensive. It was like a terrier attacking a bulldog. They drove the Germans from Malines by the very impetus of their attack, but the Germans brought up heavy reinforcements, and by the morning of the 26th the Belgians were in a most perilous posi- tion. The battle which hinged on the posses- sion of the railway embankment gradually extended, each army trying to outflank the other, until it was being fought along a front of thirty miles. At dawn on the second day an artillery duel began across the embankment, ISO FIGHTING IN FLANDERS the German fire being corrected by observers in captive balloons. By noon the Germans had gotten the range and a rain of shrapnel was bursting about the Belgian batteries, which limbered up and retired at a trot in perfect order. After the guns were out of range I could see the dark-blue masses of the support- ing Belgian infantry slowly falling back, cool as a winter's morning. Through an oversight, however, two battalions of Carabineers did not receive the order to retire and were in imminent danger of being cut off and destroyed. Then occurred one of the bravest acts that I have ever seen. To reach them a messenger would have to traverse a mile of open road, swept by shrieking shrapnel and raked by rifle fire. There was about one chance in a thousand of a man getting to the end of that road alive. A colonel standing beside me under a railway culvert summoned a gendarme, gave him the necessary orders, and added, "Bonne chance, mon brave." The man, a fierce-mustached fellow who would have gladdened the heart of Napoleon, knew that he was being sent into the jaws of death, but he merely saluted, set spurs to his horse, and tore down the road, ON THE BELGIAN BATTLE-LINE 151 an archaic figure in his towering bearskin. He reached the troops uninjured and gave the order for them to retreat, but as they fell back the German gunners got the range and with marvellous accuracy dropped shell after shell into the running column. Soon road and fields were dotted with corpses in Belgian blue. Time after time the Germans attempted to carry the railway embankment with the bayo- net, but the Belgians met them with blasts of lead which shrivelled the gray columns as leaves are shrivelled by an autumn wind. By mid-afternoon the Belgians and Germans were in places barely a hundred yards apart, and the rattle of musketry sounded like a boy drawing a stick along the palings of a picket-fence. During the height of the battle a Zeppelin slowly circled over the field like a great vulture awaiting a feast. So heavy was the fighting that the embankment of a branch railway from which . I viewed the afternoon's battle was literally carpeted with the corpses of Germans who had been killed during the morning. One of them had died clasping a woman's picture. He was buried with it still 1 52 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS clenched in his hand. I saw peasants throw a score of bodies into a single grave. One peasant would grasp a corpse by the shoulders and another would take its feet and they would give it a swing as though it were a sack of meal. As I watched these inanimate forms being carelessly tossed into the trench it was hard to make myself believe that only a few hours before they had been sons or husbands or fathers and that somewhere across the Rhine women and children were waiting and watching and praying for them. At a ham- let near Sempst I helped to bury an aged farmer and his son, inoffensive peasants, who had been executed by the Germans because a retreating Belgian soldier had shot a Uhlan in front of their farmhouse. Not content with shooting them, they had disfigured them almost beyond recognition. There were twenty-two bayonet wounds in the old man's face. I know, for I counted them. By four o'clock all the Belgian troops were withdrawn except a thin screen to cover the retreat. As I wished to see the German advance I remained on the railway embank- ment on the outskirts of Sempst after all the ON THE BELGIAN BATTLE-LINE 153 Belgians, save a picket of ten men, had been withdrawn from the village. I had my car waiting in the road below with the motor running. As the German infantry would have to advance across a mile of open fields it was obvious that I would have ample time in which to get away. The Germans prefaced their advance by a terrific cannonade. The air was filled with whining shrapnel. Farm- houses collapsed amid puffs of brown smoke. The sky was smeared in a dozen places with the smoke of burning hamlets. Suddenly a soldier crouching beside me cried, " Les Alle- mands ! Les Allemands ! " and from the woods which screened the railway embankment burst a long line of gray figures, hoarsely cheering. At almost the same moment I heard a sudden splutter of shots in the village street behind me and my driver screamed, "Hurry for your life, monsieur! The Uhlans are upon us!" In my desire to see th,e main German advance it had never occurred to me that a force of the enemy's cavalry might slip around and take us in the flank, which was exactly what had happened. It was three hundred yards to the car and a freshly ploughed field lay between, 154 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS but I am confident that I broke the world's record for the distance. As I leaped into the car and we shot down the road at fifty miles an hour, the Uhlans cantered into the village, the sunlight striking on their lance tips. It was a close call. The retreat from Malines provided a spec- tacle which I shall never forget. For twenty miles every road was jammed with clattering cavalry, plodding infantry, and rumbling bat- teries, the guns, limbers, and caissons still covered with the green boughs which had been used to mask their position from German aeroplanes. Gendarmes in giant bearskins, Chasseurs in uniforms of green and yellow, Carabineers with their shiny leather hats, Grenadiers, infantry of the line, Guides, Lancers, sappers and miners with picks and spades, engineers with pontoon wagons, machine guns drawn by dogs, ambulances with huge Red Cross flags fluttering above them, and cars, cars, cars, all the dear old familiar American makes among them, contributed to form a mighty river flowing Antwerpward. Malines formerly had a population of fifty thousand people, and forty-five thousand of these ON THE BELGIAN BATTLE-LINE 155 fled when they heard that the Germans were returning. The scenes along the road were heart-rending in their pathos. The very young and the very old, the rich and the well-to- do and the poverty-stricken, the lame and the sick and the blind, with the few belongings they had been able to save in sheet-wrapped bundles on their backs or piled in push-carts, clogged the roads and impeded the soldiery. These people were abandoning all that they held most dear to pillage and destruction. They were completely terrorized by the Germans. But the Belgian army was not terrorized. It was a retreating army but it was victorious in retreat. The soldiers were cool, confident, courageous, and gave me the feeling that if the German giant left himself unguarded a single instant little Belgium would drive home a solar-plexus blow. For many days after its evacuation by the Belgians, Malines occupied an unhappy position midway between the contending armies, being alternately bombarded by the Belgians and the Germans. The latter, instead of en- deavoring to avoid damaging the splendid cathedral, whose tower, three hundred and 1 56 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS twenty-five feet high, is the most conspicuous landmark in the region, seemed to take a grim pleasure in directing their fire upon the ancient building. The great clock, the largest in Belgium, was destroyed; the famous stained- glass windows were broken; the exquisite carvings were shattered; and shells, crashing through the walls and roof, converted the beautiful interior into a heap of debris. As there were no Belgian troops in Malines at this time, and as this fact was perfectly well known to the Germans, this bombardment of an undefended city and the destruction of its historic monuments struck me as being pecu- liarly wanton and not induced by any military necessity. It was, of course, part and parcel of the German policy of terrorism and intimi- dation. The bombardment of cities, the destruction of historic monuments, the burning of villages, and, in many cases, the massacre of civilians was the price which the Belgians were forced to pay for resisting the invader. In order to ascertain just what damage had been done to the city, and particularly to the cathedral, I ran into Malines in my car during a pause in the bombardment. As the streets ON THE BELGIAN BATTLE-LINE 157 were too narrow to permit of turning the cir around, and as it was more than probable that we should have to get out in a hurry, Roos ( suggested that we run in backward, which we did, I standing up in the tonneau, field-glasses glued to my eyes, on the lookout for lurking Germans. I don't recall ever having had a more eerie experience than that surreptitious visit to Malines. The city was as silent and deserted as a cemetery; there was not a human being to be seen; and as we cautiously ad- vanced through the narrow, winding streets, the vacant houses echoed the throbbing of the motor with a racket which was positively startling. Just as we reached the square in front of the cathedral a German shell came shrieking over the housetops and burst with a shattering crash in the upper story of a building a few yards away. The whole front of that building came crashing down about us in a cascade of brick and plaster. We did not stay on the order of our going. No. We went out of that town faster than any auto- mobile ever went out of it before. We went so fast, in fact, that we struck and killed the only remaining inhabitant. He was a large yellow dog. 158 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS Owing to strategic reasons the magnitude and significance of the great four days' battle which was fought in mid-September between the Belgian field army and the combined German forces in northern Belgium were care- fully masked in all official communications at the time, and, in the rush of later events, its importance was lost sight of. Yet the great flanking movement of the Allies in France largely owed its success to this determined offensive movement on the part of the Belgians, who, as it afterward proved, were acting in close co-operation with the French General Staff. This unexpected sally, which took the Germans completely by surprise, not only compelled them to concentrate all their avail- able forces in Belgium, but, what was far more important, it necessitated the hasty recall of their Third and Ninth Armies, which were close to the French frontier and whose addition to the German battle-line in France might well have turned the scales in Germany's favor. In addition the Germans had to bring up their Landwehr and Landsturm regiments from the south of Brussels, and a naval division composed of fifteen thousand sailors and marines was also engaged. It is no exaggera- ON THE BELGIAN BATTLE-LINE 159 tion, then, to say that the success of the Allies on the Aisne was in great measure due to the sacrifices made on this occasion by the Belgian army. Every available man which the Germans could put into the field was used to hold a line running through Sempst, Weerde, Campen- hout, Wespelaer, Rotselaer, and Holsbeek. The Belgians lay to the northeast of this line, their left resting on Aerschot and their centre at Meerbeek. Between the opposing armies stretched the Malines-Louvain canal, along almost the entire length of which fighting as bloody as any in the war took place. To describe this battle I do not even know by what name it will be known to future generations would be to usurp the duties of the historian, and I shall only attempt, there- fore, to tell you of that portion of it which I saw with my own eyes. On the morning of September 13 four Belgian divisions moved southward from Malines, their objective being the town of Weerde, on the Antwerp-Brussels railway. It was known that the Germans occupied Weerde in force, so throughout the day the Belgian artillery, masked by heavy woods, pounded away incessantly at the town. 160 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS By noon the enemy's guns ceased to reply, which was assumed by the jubilant Belgians to be a sign that the German artillery had been silenced. At noon the Belgian First Division moved forward and Thompson and I, leaving the car in front of a convent over which the Red Cross flag was flying, moved forward with it. Standing quite by itself in the middle of a field, perhaps a mile beyond the convent, was a two-story brick farmhouse. A hundred yards in front of the farmhouse stretched the raised, stone-paved, tree-lined highway which runs from Brussels to Antwerp, and on the other side of the highway was Weerde. Shel- tering ourselves as much as possible in the trenches which zigzagged across the field, and dashing at full speed across the open places which were swept by rifle fire, we succeeded in reaching the farmhouse. Ascending to the garret, we broke a hole through the tiled roof and found ourselves looking down upon the battle precisely as one looks down on a ball game from the upper tier of seats at the Polo Grounds. Lying in the deep ditch which bor- dered our side of the highway was a Belgian in- fantry brigade, composed of two regiments of ON THE BELGIAN BATTLE-LINE 161 Carabineers and two regiments of Chasseurs d piedy the men all crouching in the ditch or ly- ing prone upon the ground. Five hundred yards away, on the other side of the highway, we could see through the trees the whitewashed walls and red pottery roofs of Weerde, while a short distance to the right, in a heavily wooded park, was a large stone chateau. The only sign that the town was occupied was a pall of blue-gray vapor which hung over it and a continuous crackle of musketry coming from it, though occasionally, through my glasses, I could catch glimpses of the lean muzzles of machine guns protruding from the upper windows of the chateau. Now, you must bear in mind the fact that in this war soldiers fired from the trenches for days on end without once getting a glimpse of the enemy. They knew that somewhere opposite them, in that bit of wood, perhaps, or behind that group of buildings, or on the other side of that railway embankment, the enemy was trying to kill them just as earnestly as they were trying to kill him. But they rarely got a clear view of him save in street fighting and, of course, when he was advancing 162 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS across open country. Soldiers no longer select their man and pick him off as one would pick off a stag, because the great range of modern rifles has put the firing-lines too far apart for that sort of thing. Instead, therefore, of aim- ing at individuals, soldiers aim at the places where they believe those individuals to be. Each company commander shows his men their target, tells them at what distance to set their sights, and controls their expenditure of ammu- nition, the fire of infantry generally being more effective when delivered in bursts by sections. What I have said in general about infantry being unable to see the target at which they are firing was particularly true at Weerde owing to the dense foliage which served to screen the enemy's position. Occasionally, after the ex- plosion of a particularly well-placed Belgian shell, Thompson and I, from our hole in the roof and with the aid of our high-power glasses, could catch fleeting glimpses of scurrying gray- clad figures, but that was all. The men below us in the trenches could see nothing except the hedges, gardens, and red-roofed houses of a country town. They knew the enemy was there, however, from the incessant rattle of < ON THE BELGIAN BATTLE-LINE 163 musketry and machine guns and from the screams and exclamations of those of their fellows who happened to get in the bullets' way. Late in the afternoon word was passed down the line that the German guns had been put out of action, that the enemy was retiring, and that at 5.30 sharp trfe whole Belgian line would advance and take the town with the bayonet. Under cover of artillery fire so continuous that it sounded like thunder in the mountains, the Belgian infantry climbed out of the trenches and, throwing aside their knapsacks, formed up behind the road preparatory to the grand assault. A moment later a dozen dog batteries came trotting up and took position on the left of the infantry. At 5.30 to the minute the whistles of the officers sounded shrilly and the mile-long line of men swept forward cheering. They crossed the roadway, they scrambled over ditches, they climbed fences, they pushed through hedges, until they were within a hundred yards of the line of buildings which formed the outskirts of the town. Then hell itself broke loose. The whole German front, 164 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS which for several hours past had replied but feebly to the Belgian fire, spat a continuous stream of lead and flame. The rolling crash of musketry and the ripping snarl of machine guns were stabbed by the vicious pom-pom-pom- pom-pom of the quick-firers. From every window of the three-storied chateau opposite us the lean muzzles of mitrailleuses poured out their hail of death. I have seen fighting on four continents, but I have never witnessed so deadly a fire as that which wiped out the head of the Belgian column as a sponge wipes out figures on a slate. The Germans had prepared a trap and the Belgians had walked or rather charged directly into it. Three minutes later the dog batteries came tearing back on a dead run. That should have been a signal that it was high time for us to go, but, in spite of the fact that a storm was brewing, we waited to see the ninth inning. Then things began to happen with a rapidity that was bewildering. Back through the hedges, across the ditches, over the roadway came the Belgian infantry, crouching, stooping, running for their lives. Every now and then a soldier would stumble, ON THE BELGIAN BATTLE-LINE 165 as though he had stubbed his toe, and throw out his arms and fall headlong. The road was sprinkled with silent forms in blue and green. The fields were sprinkled with them too. One man was hit as he was strug- gling to get through a hedge and died stand- ing, held upright by the thorny branches. Men with blood streaming down their faces, men with horrid crimson patches on their tunics, limped, crawled, staggered past, leaving scarlet trails behind them. A young officer of Chas- seurs, who had been recklessly exposing himself while trying to check the retreat of his men, suddenly spun around on his heels, like one of those wooden toys which the curb venders sell, and then crumpled up, as though all the bone and muscle had gone out of him. A man plunged into a half-filled ditch and lay there, with his head under water. I could see the water slowly redden. Bullets began to smash the tiles above us. "This is no place for two innocent little American boys," remarked Thompson, shoul- dering his camera. I agreed with him. By the time we reached the ground the Belgian infantry was half a mile in our rear, and to i66 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS reach the car we had to cross nearly a mile of open field. Bullets were singing across it and kicking up little spurts of brown earth where they struck. We had not gone a hundred yards when the German artillery, which the Belgians so confidently asserted had been silenced, opened with shrapnel. Have you ever heard a winter gale howling and shriek- ing through the tree tops ? Of course. Then you know what shrapnel sounds like, only it is louder. You have no idea though how ex- tremely annoying shrapnel is, when it bursts in your immediate vicinity. You feel as though you would like nothing in the world so much as to be suddenly transformed into a woodchuck and have a convenient hole. I remembered that an artillery officer had told me that a burst of shrapnel from a battery two miles away will spread itself over an eight- acre field, and every time I heard the moan of an approaching shell I wondered if it would decide to explode in the particular eight-acre field in which I happened to be. As though the German shell storm was not making things sufficiently uncomfortable for as, when we were half-way across the field ON THE BELGIAN BATTLE-LINE 167 two Belgian soldiers suddenly rose from a trench and covered us with their rifles. "Halt ! Hands up !" they shouted. There was nothing for it but to obey them. We advanced with our hands in the air but with our heads twisted upward on the lookout for shrapnel. As we approached they recognized us. "Oh, you're the Americans," said one of them, lowering his rifle. "We couldn't see your faces and we took you for Germans. You'd better come with us. It's getting too hot to stay here." The four of us started on a run for a little cluster of houses a few hundred yards away. By this time the shells were coming across at the rate of twenty a minute. "Sup- pose we go into a cellar until the storm blows over," suggested Roos, who had joined us. "I'm all for that," said I, making a dive for the nearest doorway. "Keep away from that house!" shouted a Belgian soldier who sud- denly appeared from around a corner. "The man who owns it has gone insane from fright. He's up-stairs with a rifle and he's shooting at every one who passes." "Well, I call that damned inhospitable," said Thompson, and Roos and I heartily agreed with him. There 168 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS was nothing else for it, therefore, but to make a dash for the car. We had left it standing in front of a convent over which a Red Cross flag was flying on the assumption that there it would be perfectly safe. But we found that we were mistaken. The Red Cross flag did not spell protection by any means. As we came within sight of the car a shell burst within thirty feet of it, a fragment of the projectile burying itself in the door. I never knew of a car taking so long to crank. Though it was really probably only a matter of seconds before the engine started it seemed to us, standing in that shell-swept road, like hours. Darkness had now fallen. A torrential rain had set in. The car slid from one side of the road to the other like a Scotchman coming home from celebrating Bobbie Burns's birth- day and repeatedly threatened to capsize in the ditch. The mud was ankle-deep and the road back to Malines was now in the possession of the Germans, so we were compelled to make a detour through a deserted countryside, running through the inky blackness without lights so as not to invite a visit from a shell. It was long after midnight when, cold, wet, ON THE BELGIAN BATTLE-LINE 169 and famished, we called the password to the sentry at the gateway through the barbed-wire entanglements which encircled Antwerp and he let us in. It was a very lively day for, every one concerned and there were a few minutes when I thought that I would never see the Statue of Liberty again. VII THE COMING OF THE BRITISH IMAGINE, if you please, a professional heavyweight prize-fighter, with an ab- normally long reach, holding an ama- teur bantam-weight boxer at arm's length with one hand and hitting him when and where he pleased with the other. The fact that the little man was not in the least afraid of his burly antagonist and that he got in a vicious kick or jab whenever he saw an opening would not, of course, have any effect on the outcome of the unequal contest. Now that is almost precisely what happened when the Germans besieged Antwerp, the enormously superior range and caliber of their siege-guns enabling them to pound the city's defences to pieces at their leisure without the defenders being able to offer any effective resistance. Though Antwerp was to all intents and purposes a besieged city for many weeks prior to its capture, it was not until the beginning of the last week in September that the Germans 170 THE COMING OF THE BRITISH 171 seriously set to work destroying its forti- fications. When they did begin, however, their great siege-pieces pounded the forts as steadily and remorselessly as a trip-hammer pounds a bar of iron. At the time the Belgian General Staff believed that the Germans were using the same giant howitzers which demol- ished the forts at Liege, but in this they were mistaken, for, as it transpired later, the Antwerp fortifications owed their destruction to Aus- trian guns served by Austrian artillerymen. Now, guns of this size can only be fired from specially prepared concrete beds, and these beds, as we afterward learned, had been built during the preceding month behind the em- bankment of the railway which runs from Malines to Louvain, thus accounting for the tenacity with which the Germans had held this railway despite repeated attempts to dis- lodge them. At this stage of the investment the Germans were firing at a range of upwards of eight miles, while the Belgians had no artillery that was effective at more than six. Add to this the fact that the German fire was remarkably accurate, being controlled and constantly corrected by observers stationed in 172 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS balloons, and that the German shells were loaded with an explosive having greater destruc- tive properties than either cordite or shimose powder, and it will be seen how hopeless was the Belgian position. The scenes along the Lierre-St. Catherine- Waelhem sector, against which the Germans at first focussed their attack, were impressive and awesome beyond description. Against a livid sky rose pillars of smoke from burning villages. The air was filled with shrieking shell and bursting shrapnel. The deep- mouthed roar of the guns in the forts and the angry bark of the Belgian field-batteries were answered at intervals by the shattering crash of the German high-explosive shells. When one of these big shells the soldiers dubbed them "Antwerp expresses" struck in a field it sent up a geyser of earth two hundred feet in height. When they dropped in a river or canal, as sometimes happened, there was a waterspout. And when they dropped in a village, that village disappeared from the map. While we were watching the bombardment from a rise in the Waelhem road a shell burst in the hamlet of Waerloos, whose red-brick THE COMING OF THE BRITISH 173 houses were clustered almost at our feet. A few minutes later a procession of fugitive villagers came plodding up the cobble-paved highway. It was headed by an ashen-faced peasant pushing a wheelbarrow with a weeping woman clinging to his arm. In the wheel- barrow, atop a pile of hastily collected house- hold goods, was sprawled the body of a little boy. He could not have been more than seven. His little knickerbockered legs and play-worn shoes protruded grotesquely from beneath a heap of bedding. When they lifted it we could see where the shell had hit him. Beside the dead boy sat his sister, a tot of three, with blood trickling from a flesh-wound in her face. She was still clinging convulsively to a toy lamb which had once been white but whose fleece was now turned to crimson. Some one passed round a hat and we awkwardly tried to express our sympathy through the medium of silver. After a little pause they started on again, the father stolidly pushing the wheelbarrow, with its pathetic load, before him. It was the only home that family had. One of the bravest acts that I have ever 174 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS seen was performed by an American woman during the bombardment of Waelhem. Her name was Mrs. Winterbottom; she was origi- nally from Boston, and had married an English army officer. When he went to the front in France she went to the front in Belgium, bringing over her car, which she drove herself, and placing it at the disposal of the British Field Hospital. After the fort of Waelhem had been silenced and such of the garrison as were able to move had been withdrawn, word was received at ambulance headquarters that a number of dangerously wounded had been left behind and that they would die unless they received immediate attention. To reach the fort it was necessary to traverse nearly two miles of road swept by shell-fire. Before any one realized what was happening a big gray car shot down the road with the slender figure of Mrs. Winterbottom at the wheel. Clinging to the running-board was her English chauffeur and beside her sat my little Kansas photographer, Donald Thompson. Though the air was filled with the fleecy white patches which look like cotton-wool but are really burst- ing shrapnel, Thompson told me afterward THE COMING OF THE BRITISH 175 that Mrs. Winterbottom was as cool as though she were driving down her native Commonwealth Avenue on a Sunday morning. When they reached the fort shells were falling all about them, but they filled the car with wounded men and Mrs. Winterbottom started back with her blood-soaked freight for the Belgian lines. Thompson remained in the fort to take pictures. When darkness fell he made his way back to the village of Waelhem, where he found a regiment of Belgian infantry. In one of the soldiers Thompson recognized a man who, before the war, had been a waiter in the St. Regis Hotel in New York and who had been detailed to act as his guide and interpreter during the fighting before Termonde. This man took Thompson into a wine-shop where a detachment of soldiers was quartered, gave him food, and spread straw upon the floor for him to sleep on. Shortly after midnight a forty- two centimetre shell struck the building. Of the soldiers who were sleeping in the same room as Thompson nine were killed and fifteen more who were sleeping up-stairs, the ex-waiter among them. Thompson told me that when 176 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS the ceiling gave way and the mangled corpses came tumbling down upon him, he ran up the street with his hands above his head, scream- ing like a madman. He met an officer whom he knew and they ran down the street together, hoping to get out of the doomed town. Just then a projectile from one of the German siege-guns tore down the long, straight street, a few yards above their heads. The blast of air which it created was so terrific that it threw them down. Thompson said that it was like standing close to the edge of the platform at a wayside station when the Empire State Express goes by. When his nerve came back to him he pulled a couple of cigars out of his pocket and offered one to the officer. Their hands trembled so, he said afterward, that they used up half a box of matches before they could get their cigars lighted. I am inclined to think that the most bizarre incident I saw during the bombardment of the outer forts was the flight of the women inmates of a madhouse at Duffel. There were three hundred women in the institution, many of them violently insane, and the nuns in THE COMING OF THE BRITISH 177 charge, assisted by soldiers, had to take them across a mile of open country, under a rain of shells, to a waiting train. I shall not soon for- get the picture of that straggling procession winding its slow way across the stubble-covered fields. Every few seconds a shell would burst above it or in front of it or behind it with a deafening explosion. Yet, despite the frantic efforts of the nuns and soldiers, the women would not be hurried. When a shell burst some of them would scream and cower or start to run, but more of them would stop in their tracks and gibber and laugh and clap their hands like excited children. Then the soldiers would curse under their breath and push them roughly forward and the nuns would plead with them in their soft, low voices, to hurry, hurry, hurry. We, who were watching the scene, thought that few of them would reach the train alive, yet not one was killed or wounded. The Arabs are right: the mad are under God's protection. One of the most inspiring features of the campaign in Belgium was the heroism displayed by the priests and the members of the religious orders. Village cures in their black cassocks 178 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS and shovel hats, and monks in sandals and brown woollen robes were everywhere. I saw them in the trenches exhorting the soldiers to fight to the last for God and the King; I saw them going out on to the battle-field with stretchers to gather the wounded under a fire which made veterans seek shelter; I saw them in the villages where the big shells were falling, helping to carry away the ill and the aged; I saw them in the hospitals taking farewell messages and administering the last sacrament to the dying; I even saw them, rifle in hand, on the firing-line, fighting for the existence of the nation. To these soldiers of the Lord I raise my hat in respect and admiration. The people of Belgium owe them a debt that they can never repay. In the days before the war it was commonly said that the Church was losing ground in Belgium; that religion was gradually being ousted by socialism. If this were so, I saw no sign of it in the nation's days of trial. Time and time again I saw soldiers before going into battle drop on their knees and cross themselves and murmur a hasty prayer. Even the throngs of terrified fugitives, flying from their burning THE COMING OF THE BRITISH 179 villages, would pause in their flight to kneel before the little shrines along the wayside. I am convinced, indeed, that the ruthless destruction of religious edifices by the Germans and the brutality which they displayed toward priests and members of the religious orders were more responsible than any one thing for the desperate resistance which they met with from the Belgian peasantry. By the afternoon of October 3 things were looking very black for Antwerp. The forts composing the Lierre-Waelhem sector of the outer line of defences had been pounded into silence by the German siege-guns; a strong German force, pushing through the breach thus made, had succeeded in crossing the Nethe in the face of desperate opposition; the Belgian troops, after a fortnight of con- tinuous fighting, were at the point of exhaus- tion; the hospitals were swamped by the streams of wounded which for days past had been pouring in; over the city hung a cloud of despondency and gloom, for the people, though kept in complete ignorance of the true state of affairs, seemed oppressed with a sense of impending disaster. i8o FIGHTING IN FLANDERS When I returned that evening to the Hotel St. Antoine from the battle front, which was then barely half a dozen miles outside the city, the manager stopped me as I was entering the 'lift. "Are you leaving with the others, Mr. Powell ?" he whispered. "Leaving for where? With what others?'* I asked sharply. "Hadn't you heard?" he answered in some confusion. "The members of the Govern- ment and the diplomatic corps are leaving for Ostend by special steamer at seven in the morning. It has just been decided at a Cabinet meeting. But don't mention it to a soul. No one is to know it until they are safely gone. * I remember that as I continued to my room the corridors smelled of smoke, and upon inquiring its cause I learned that the British Minister, Sir Francis Villiers, and his secre- taries were burning papers in the rooms occu- pied by the British Legation. The Russian Minister, who was superintending the packing of his trunks in the hall, stopped me to say good-by. Imagine my surprise, then, upon go- ing down to breakfast the following morning, THE COMING OF THE BRITISH 181 to meet Count Goblet d'Alviella, the Vice- President of the Senate and a Minister of State, leaving the dining-room. "Why, Count!" I exclaimed, "I had sup- posed that you were well on your way to Ostend by this time." "We had expected to be," explained the venerable statesman, "but at four o'clock this morning the British Minister sent us word that Winston Churchill had started for Ant- werp and asking us to wait and hear what he has to say." At one o'clock that afternoon a big drab- colored touring-car filled with British naval officers tore up the Place de Meir, its horn sounding a hoarse warning, took the turn into the narrow Marche aux Souliers on two wheels, and drew up in front of the hotel. Before the car had fairly come to a stop the door of the tonneau was thrown violently open and out jumped a smooth-faced, sandy-haired, stoop-shouldered, youthful-looking man in the undress Trinity House uniform. There was no mistaking who it was. It was the Right Hon. Winston Churchill. As he darted into the crowded lobby, which, as 1 82 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS usual at the luncheon hour, was filled with Belgian, French, and British staff-officers, di- plomatists, Cabinet Ministers, and correspond- ents, he flung his arms out in a nervous, char- acteristic gesture, as though pushing his way through a crowd. It was a most spectacular entrance and reminded me for all the world of a scene in a melodrama where the hero dashes up, bareheaded, on a foam-flecked horse, and saves the heroine or the old home- stead or the family fortune, as the case may be. While lunching with Sir Francis Villiers and the staff of the British Legation, two English correspondents approached and asked Mr. Churchill for an interview. "I will not talk to you," he almost shouted, bringing his fist down upon the table. "You have no business to be in Belgium at this time. Get out of the country at once." It happened that my table was so close that I could not help but overhear the request and the response, and I remember remark- ing to the friends who were dining with me: "Had Mr. Churchill said that to me, I should have answered him, 'I have as much business THE COMING OF THE BRITISH 183 in Belgium at this time, sir, as you had in Cuba during the Spanish-American War." An hour later I was standing in the lobby talking to M. de Vos, the burgomaster of Antwerp, M. Louis Franck, the Antwerp member of the Chamber of Deputies, Ameri- can Consul-General Diederich and Vice-ConsuI- General Sherman, when Mr. Churchill rushed past us on his way to his room. He impressed one as being always in a tearing hurry. The burgomaster stopped him, introduced himself, and expressed his anxiety regarding the fate of the city. Before he had finished Churchill was part-way up the stairs. "I think everything will be all right now, Mr. Burgomaster," he called down in a voice which could be distinctly heard throughout the lobby. "You needn't worry. We're go- ing to save the city." Whereupon most of the civilians present heaved sighs of relief. They felt that a real sailor had taken the wheel. Those of us who were conversant with the situation were also relieved because we took it for granted that Mr. Churchill would not have made so con- fident and public an assertion unless ample 1 84 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS reinforcements in men and guns were on the way. Even then the words of this energetic, impetuous young man did not entirely reassure me, for from the windows of my room I could hear the German guns quite plainly. They had come appreciably nearer. That afternoon and the three days following Mr. Churchill spent in inspecting the Belgian position. He repeatedly exposed himself upon the firing-line and on one occasion, near Wael- hem, had a rather narrow escape from a burst of shrapnel. For some unexplainable reason the British censorship cast a veil of profound secrecy over Mr. Churchill's visit to Antwerp. The story of his arrival, just as I have related it above, I telegraphed that same night to the New York World, yet it never got through, nor did any of the other despatches which I sent during his four days' visit. In fact, it was not until after Antwerp had fallen that the British public was permitted to learn that the Sea Lord had been in Belgium. Had it not been for the promises of rein- forcements given to the King and the Cabinet by Mr. Churchill, there is no doubt that the Government would have departed for Ostend THE COMING OF THE BRITISH 185 when originally planned and that the inhabi- tants of Antwerp, thus warned of the extreme gravity of the situation, would have had ample time to leave the city with a semblance of comfort and order, for the railways leading to Ghent and to the Dutch frontier were still in operation and the highways were then not blocked by a retreating army. The first of the promised reinforcements arrived on Sunday evening by special train from Ostend. They consisted of a brigade of the Royal Marines, perhaps two thousand men in all, well-drilled and well-armed, and several heavy guns. They were rushed to the southern front and immediately sent into the trenches to relieve the worn-out Belgians. On Monday and Tuesday the balance of the British expe- ditionary force, consisting of between five and six thousand men of the Volunteer Naval Reserve, arrived from the coast, their ammuni- tion and supplies being brought by road, via Bruges and Ghent, in London motor-'buses. When this procession of lumbering vehicles, placarded with advertisements of teas, tobaccos, whiskeys, and current theatrical attractions and bearing the signs "Bank," "Holborn," 1 86 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS "Piccadilly," "Shepherd's Bush," "Strand," rumbled through the streets of Antwerp, the populace went mad. The British had come at last ! The city was saved ! "Five les Anglais! Five Tommy Atkins!" I witnessed the detrainment of the naval brigades at Vieux Dieu and accompanied them to the trenches north of Lierre. As they tramped down the tree-bordered, cobble- paved highroad, we heard, for the first time in Belgium, the lilting refrain of that music- hall ballad which had become the English soldiers' marching song: " It's a long way to Tipperary, It's a long way to go ; It's a long way to Tipperary To the sweetest girl I know ! Good-by, Piccadilly ! Farewell, Leicester Square I It's a long) long way to Tipperary ; But my heart's right there ! " Many and many a one of the light-hearted lads with whom I marched down the Lierre road on that October afternoon were destined never again to feel beneath their feet the flags of THE COMING OF THE BRITISH 187 Piccadilly, never again to lounge in Leicester Square. They were as clean-limbed, pleasant-faced, wholesome-looking a lot of young Englishmen as you would find anywhere, but to any one who had had military experience it was evident that, despite the fact that they were vigorous and courageous and determined to do their best, they were not "first-class fighting men." To win in war, as in the prize-ring, something more than vigor and courage and determina- tion are required; to those qualities must be added experience and training, and experience and training were precisely what those naval reservists lacked. Moreover, their equipment left much to be desired. For example, only a very small proportion had pouches to carry the regulation one hundred and fifty rounds. They were, in fact, equipped very much as many of the American militia organizations were equipped when suddenly called out for strike duty in the days before the reorgani- zation of the National Guard. Even the officers those, at least, with whom I talked seemed to be as deficient in field experience as the men. Yet these raw troops were i88 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS rushed into trenches which were in most cases unprotected by head covers, and, though un- supported by effective artillery, they held those trenches for three days under as murderous a shell fire as I have ever seen and then fell back in perfect order. What the losses of the Naval Division were I do not know. In Antwerp it was generally understood that very close to a fifth of the entire force was killed or wounded upwards of three hundred cases were, I was told, treated in one hospital alone and the British Government officially announced that sixteen hundred were forced across the frontier and interned in Holland. No small part in the defence of the city was played by the much-talked-about armored train, which was built under the supervision of Lieutenant-Commander Littlejohn in the yards of the Antwerp Engineering Company at Hoboken. The train consisted of four large coal trucks with sides of armor-plate sufficiently high to afford protection to the crews of the 4.7 naval guns six of which were brought from England for the purpose, though there was only time to mount four of them and between each gun truck was a heavily THE COMING OF THE BRITISH 189 armored baggage-car for ammunition, the whole being drawn by a small locomotive, also steel-protected. The guns were served ' by Belgian artillerymen commanded by British gunners and each gun truck carried, in addition, a detachment of infantry in the event of the enemy getting to close quarters. Personally, I am inclined to believe that the chief value of this novel contrivance lay in the moral encouragement it lent to the defence, for its guns, though more powerful, certainly, than anything that the Belgians possessed, were wholly outclassed, both in range and caliber, by the German artillery. The German officers whom I questioned on the subject after the occupation told me that the fire of the armored train caused them no serious concern and did comparatively little damage. By Tuesday night a boy scout could have seen that the position of Antwerp was hope- less. The Austrian siege-guns had smashed and silenced the chain of supposedly impreg- nable forts to the south of the city with the same businesslike despatch with which the same type of guns had smashed and silenced those other supposedly impregnable forts at 190 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS Liege and Namur. Through the opening thus made a German army corps had poured to fling itself against the second line of defence, formed by the Ruppel and the Nethe. Across the Nethe, under cover of a terrific artillery fire, the Germans threw their pontoon bridges, and when the first bridges were destroyed by the Belgian guns they built others, and when these were destroyed in turn they tried again, and at the third attempt they succeeded. With the helmeted legions once across the river, it was all over but the shouting, and no one knew it better than the Belgians, yet, heartened by the presence of the little handful of English, they fought desperately, doggedly on. Their forts pounded to pieces by guns which they could not answer, their ranks thinned by a murderous rain of shot and shell, the men heavy-footed and heavy-eyed from lack of sleep, the horses staggering from exhaustion, the ambulance service broken down, the hospitals helpless before the flood of wounded, the trenches littered with the dead and dying, they still held back the German legions. By this time the region to the south of Antwerp had been transformed from a THE COMING OF THE BRITISH 191 peaceful, smiling countryside into a land of death and desolation. It looked as though it had been swept by a great hurricane, filled with lightning which had missed nothing. The blackened walls of what had once been prosperous farmhouses, haystacks turned into heaps of smoking carbon, fields slashed across with trenches, roads rutted and broken by the great wheels of guns and transport wagons these scenes were on every hand. In the towns and villages along the Nethe, where the fighting was heaviest, the walls of houses had fallen into the streets and piles of furniture, mattresses, agricultural machinery, and farm carts showed where the barricades and machine guns had been. The windows of many of the houses were stuffed with mattresses and pillows, behind which the riflemen had made a stand. Lierre and Waelhem and Duffel were like sieves dripping blood. Corpses were strewn everywhere. Some of the dead were spread- eagled on their backs as though exhausted after a long march, some were twisted and crumpled in attitudes grotesque and horrible, some were propped up against the walls of houses to which they ^iad tried to crawl in their agony. 192 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS All of them stared at nothing with awful, unseeing eyes. It was one of the scenes that I should like to forget. But I never can. On Tuesday evening General de Guise, the military Governor of Antwerp, informed the Government that the Belgian position was fast becoming untenable and, acting on this information, the capital of Belgium was trans- ferred from Antwerp to Ostend, the members of the Government and the diplomatic corps leaving at daybreak on Wednesday by special steamer, while at the same time Mr. Winston Churchill departed for the coast by auto- mobile under convoy of an armored motor- car. His last act was to order the destruction of the condensers of the German vessels in the harbor, for which the Germans, upon occupying the city, demanded an indemnity of twenty million francs. As late as Wednesday morning the great majority of the inhabitants of Antwerp re- mained in total ignorance of the real state of affairs. Morning after morning the Matin and the Metropole had published official com- muniques categorically denying that any of the forts had been silenced and asserting in the THE COMING OF THE BRITISH 193 most positive terms that the enemy was being held in check all along the line. As a result of this policy of denial and deception, the people of Antwerp went to sleep on Tuesday night calmly confident that in a few days more the Germans would raise the siege from sheer discouragement and depart. Imagine what happened, then, when they awoke on Wednes- day morning, October 7, to learn that the Government had stolen away between two days without issuing so much as a word of warning, and to find staring at them from every wall and hoarding proclamations signed by the military Governor announcing that the bombardment of the city was imminent, urging all who were able to leave instantly, and advising those who remained to shelter them- selves behind sand-bags in their cellars. It was like waiting until the entire first floor of a house was in flames and the occupants' means of escape almost cut off", before shouting "Fire!" No one who witnessed the exodus of the population from Antwerp will ever forget it. No words can adequately describe it. It was not a flight; it was a stampede. The sober, 194 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS slow-moving, slow-thinking Flemish towns- people were suddenly transformed into a herd of terror-stricken cattle. So complete was the German enveloping movement that only three avenues of escape remained open: west- ward, through St. Nicolas and Lokeren, to Ghent; northeastward across the frontier into Holland; down the Scheldt toward Flushing. Of the five hundred thousand fugitives for the exodus was not confined to the citizens of Antwerp but included the entire population of the countryside for twenty miles around probably fully a quarter of a million escaped by river. Anything that could float was pressed into service: merchant steamers, dredgers, ferry-boats, scows, barges, canal-boats, tugs, fishing craft, yachts, rowing boats, launches, even extemporized rafts. There was no attempt to enforce order. The fear- frantic people piled aboard until there was not even standing-room on the vessels' decks. Of all these thousands who fled by river, but an insignificant proportion were provided with food or warm clothing or had space in which to lie down. Yet through two nights they huddled together on the open decks in the THE COMING OF THE BRITISH 195 cold and the darkness while the great guns tore to pieces the city they had left behind them. As I passed up the crowded river in my launch on the morning after the first night's bombardment we seemed to be followed by a wave of sound a great murmur of min- gled anguish and misery and fatigue and hun- ger from the homeless thousands adrift upon the waters. The scenes along the highways were even more appalling, for here the retreating soldiery and the fugitive civilians were mixed in in- extricable confusion. By mid-afternoon on Wednesday the road from Antwerp to Ghent, a distance of forty miles, was a solid mass of refugees, and the same was true of every road, every lane, every footpath leading in a westerly or a northerly direction. The people fled in motor-cars and in carriages, in delivery wagons, in moving vans, in farm carts, in omnibuses, in vehicles drawn by oxen, by donkeys, even by cows, on horseback, on bicycles, and there were thousands upon thousands afoot. I saw men trundling wheelbarrows piled high with bedding and with their children perched upon the bedding. I saw sturdy young peasants 196 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS carrying their aged parents in their arms. I saw women of fashion in fur coats and high- heeled shoes staggering along clinging to the rails of the caissons or to the ends of wagons. I saw white-haired men and women grasping the harness of the gun teams or the stirrup- leathers of the troopers, who, themselves exhausted from many days of fighting, slept in their saddles as they rode. I saw springless farm wagons literally heaped with wounded soldiers with piteous white faces; the bottoms of the wagons leaked and left a trail of blood behind them. A very old priest, too feeble to walk, was trundled by two young priests in a hand-cart. A young woman, an expectant mother, was tenderly and anxiously helped on by her husband. One of the saddest features of all this dreadful procession was the soldiers, many of them wounded, and so bent with fatigue from many days of marching and fight- ing that they could hardly raise their feet. jOne infantryman who could bear his boots no ' longer had tied them to the cleaning-rod of his rifle. Another had strapped his boots to his cowhide knapsack and limped forward with his swollen feet in felt slippers. Here were THE COMING OF THE BRITISH 197 a group of Capuchin monks abandoning their monastery; there a little party of white-faced nuns shepherding the flock of war- orphaned children who had been intrusted to their care. The confusion was beyond all imagination, the clamour deafening: the rattle of wheels, the throbbing of motors, the clatter of hoofs, the cracking of whips, the curses of the drivers, the groans of the wounded, the cries of women, the whimpering of children, threats, pleadings, oaths, screams, imprecations, and al- ways the monotonous shuffle, shuffle, shuffle of countless weary feet. The fields and the ditches between which these processions of disaster passed were strewn with the prostrate forms of those who, from sheer exhaustion, could go no farther. And there was no food for them, no shelter. Within a few hours after the exodus began the countryside was as bare of food as the Sahara is of grass. Time after time I saw famished fugitives pause at farmhouses and offer all of their pitifully few belongings for a loaf of bread; but the kind- hearted country people, with tears streaming down their cheeks, could only shake their heads and tell them that they had long since i 9 8 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS given all their food away. Old men and fashionably gowned women and wounded soldiers went out into the fields and pulled up turnips and devoured them raw for there was nothing else to eat. During a single night, near a small town on the Dutch frontier, twenty women gave birth to children in the open fields. No one will ever know how many people perished during that awful flight from hunger and exposure and exhaus- tion; many more, certainly, than lost their lives in the bombardment. VIII THE FALL OF ANTWERP THE bombardment of Antwerp began about ten o'clock on the evening of Wednesday, October 7. The first shell to fall within the city struck a house in the Berchem district, killing a fourteen-year-old boy and wounding his mother and little sister. The second decapitated a street-sweeper as he was running for shelter. Throughout the night the rain of death continued without cessation, the shells falling at the rate of four or five a minute. The streets of the city were as deserted as those of Pompeii. The few people who remained, either because they were willing to take their chances or because they had no means of getting away, were cowering in their cellars. Though the gas ) and electric lights were out, the sky was rosy from the reflection of the petrol-tanks which the Belgians had set on fire; now and then a shell would burst with the intensity of mag- nesium, and the quivering beams of two search- lights on the forts across the river still further lit 199 200 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS up the ghastly scene. The noise was deafening. The buildings seemed to rock and sway. The very pavements trembled. Mere words are inadequate to give a conception of the horror of it all. There would come the hungry whine of a shell passing low over the housetops, followed, an instant later, by a shattering crash, and the whole fafade of the building that had been struck would topple into the street in a cascade of brick and stone and plaster. It was not until Thursday night, however, that the Germans brought their famous forty- two-centimetre guns into action. The effect of these monster cannon was appalling. So tremendous was the detonation that it sounded as though the German batteries were firing salvoes. The projectiles they were now rain:ng upon the city weighed a ton apiece and had the destructive properties of that much nitro- glycerine. We could hear them as they came. They made a roar in the air which sounded at first like an approaching express-train, but which rapidly rose in volume until the at- mosphere quivered with the howl of a cy- clone. Then would come an explosion which jarred the city to its very foundation. Over THE FALL OF ANTWERP 201 the shivering earth rolled great clouds of dust and smoke. When one of these terrible pro- jectiles struck a building it did not merely tear away the upper stories or blow a gaping aperture in its walls: the whole building crumbled, disintegrated, collapsed, as though flattened by a mighty hand. When they exploded in the open street they not only tore a hole in the pavement the size of a cottage cellar, but they sliced away the fa9ades of all the houses in the immediate vicinity, leaving their interiors exposed, like the interiors upon a stage. Compared with the "forty-twos" the shell and shrapnel fire of the first night's bombardment was insignificant and harmless. The thickest masonry was crumpled up like so much cardboard. The stoutest cellars were no protection if a shell struck above them. It seemed as though at times the whole city was coming down about our ears. Before the bombardment had been in progress a dozen hours there was scarcely a street in the southern quarter of the city save only the district occupied by wealthy Germans, whose houses remained untouched which was not ob- structed by heaps of fallen masonry. The main 202 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS thoroughfares were strewn with fallen electric- light and trolley wires and shattered poles and branches lopped from trees. The side- walks were carpeted with broken glass. The air was heavy with the acrid fumes of smoke and powder. Abandoned dogs howled mourn- fully before the doors of their deserted homes. From a dozen quarters of the city columns of smoke by day and pillars of fire by night rose against the sky. It was hell with the lid off and I am not using the term flippantly either. Owing to circumstances fortunate or un- fortunate, as one chooses to view them I was not in Antwerp during the first night's bom- bardment. You must understand that a war correspondent, no matter how many thrilling and interesting things he may be able to witness, is valueless to the paper which employs him unless he is able to get to the end of a telegraph-wire and tell the readers of that newspaper what is happening. In other words, he must not only gather the news but he must deliver it. Otherwise his usefulness ceases. When, therefore, on Wednesday morning, the telegraph service from Antwerp abruptly ended, all trains and boats stopped running, and the city was completely cut off from communi- THE FALL OF ANTWERP 203 cation with the outside world, I left in my car for Ghent, where the telegraph was still in operation, to file my despatches. So dense was the mass of retreating soldiery and fugitive civilians which blocked the approaches to the pontoon bridge, that it took me four hours to get across the Scheldt, and another four hours, owing to the slow driving necessitated by the terribly congested roads, to cover the forty miles to Ghent. I had sent my despatches, had had a hasty dinner, and w T as on the point of starting back to Antwerp, when Mr. Johnson, the American Consul at Ostend, called me up by telephone. He told me that the Minister of War, then at Ostend, had just sent him a package containing the keys of buildings and dwellings belonging to German residents of Antwerp who had been expelled at the beginning of the war, with the request that they be transmitted to the German commander immediately the German troops entered the city, as it was feared that, were these places found to be locked, it might lead to the doors being broken open and thus give the Germans a pretext for sacking. Mr. Johnson asked me if I would remain in Ghent 204 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS until he could come through in his car with the keys and if I would assume the responsibil- ity of seeing that the keys reached the Ger- man commander. I explained to Mr. Johnson that it was imperative that I should return to Antwerp immediately; but when he insisted that, under the circumstances, it was clearly my duty to take the keys through to Antwerp, I promised to await his arrival, although by so doing I felt that I was imperilling the interests of the newspaper which was employing me. Owing to the congested condition of the roads Mr. Johnson was unable to reach Ghent until Thursday morning. By this time the high- road between Ghent and Antwerp was utterly impassable one might as well have tried to paddle a canoe up the rapids at Niagara as to drive a car against the current of that river of terrified humanity so, taking advantage of comparatively empty by-roads, I succeeded in reaching Doel, a fishing village on the Scheldt a dozen miles below Antwerp, by noon on Thursday. By means of alternate bribes and threats, Roos, my driver, persuaded a boatman to take us up to Antwerp in a small motor launch THE FALL OF ANTWERP 205 over which, as a measure of precaution, I raised an American flag. As long as memory lasts there will remain with me, sharp and clear, the recollection of that journey up the Scheldt, the surface of which was literally black with vessels with their loads of silent misery. It was well into the afternoon and the second day's bombardment was at its height when we rounded the final bend in the river and the lace-like tower of the cathedral rose before us. Shells were exploding every few seconds, columns of gray-green smoke rose skyward, the air reverberated as though to a continuous peal of thunder. As we ran alongside the deserted quays a shell burst with a terrific crash in a street close by, and our boatman, panic-stricken, suddenly reversed his engine and backed into the middle of the river. Roos drew his pistol. "Go ahead!" he commanded. "Run up to the quay so that we can land." Before the grim menace of the automatic the man sullenly obeyed. "I've a wife and family at Doel," he muttered. "If I'm killed there'll be no one to look after them." 2o6 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS "I've a wife and family in America," I retorted. "You're taking no more chances than I am." I am not in the least ashamed to admit, however, that as we ran alongside the Red Star quays the American flag was floating above them, by the way I would quite willingly have given everything I possessed to have been back on Broadway again. A great city which has suddenly been deserted by its popu- lation is inconceivably depressing. Add to this the fact that every few seconds a shell would burst somewhere behind the row of buildings that screened the water-front, and that occasionally one would clear x the house- tops altogether and, moaning over our heads, would drop into the river and send up a great geyser, and you will understand that Antwerp was not exactly a cheerful place in which to land. There was not a soul to be seen any- where. Such of the inhabitants as remained had taken refuge in their cellars, and just at that time a deep cellar would have looked extremely good to me. On the other hand, as I argued with myself, there was really an exceedingly small chance of a shell exploding THE FALL OF ANTWERP 207 on the particular spot where I happened to be standing, and if it did well, it seemed more dignified, somehow, to be killed in the open than to be crushed to death in a cellar like a cornered rat. About ten o'clock in the evening the bom- bardment slackened for a time and the in- habitants of Antwerp's underworld began to creep out of their subterranean hiding-places and slink like ghosts along the quays in search of food. The great quantities of foodstuffs and other provisions which had been taken from the captured German vessels at the beginning of the war had been stored in hastily constructed warehouses upon the quays and it was not long before the rabble, undeterred by the fear of the police and willing to chance the shells, had broken in the doors and were looting to their hearts' content. As a man staggered past under a load of wine bottles, tinned goods, and cheeses, our boatman, who by this time had become reconciled to sticking by us, inquired wistfully if he might do a little looting too. "We've no food left down the river," he urged, "and I might just as well get some of those provisions for 2o8 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS my family as to let the Germans take them." Upon my assenting he disappeared into the darkness of the warehouse with a hand truck. He was not the sort who did his looting by retail, was that boatman. By midnight Roos and I were shivering as though with ague, for the night had turned cold, we had no coats, and we had been without food since leaving Ghent that morning. "I'm going to do a lit- tle looting on my own account," I announced finally. "I'm half frozen and almost starved and I'm not going to stand around here while there's plenty to eat and drink over in that warehouse." I groped my way through the blackness to the doorway and enter- ing, struck a match. By its flickering light I saw a case filled with bottles in straw cas- ings. From their shape they looked to be bottles of champagne. I reached for one eagerly, but just as my fingers closed about it a shell burst overhead. At least the crash was so terrific that it seemed as though it had burst overhead, though I found after- ward that it had exploded nearly fifty yards away. I ran for my life, clinging, however, to the bottle. "At any rate, I've found i ne DoruDarument ol Antwerp. Abandoned and starving dogs howled mournfully in front of what had once been their homes. THE FALL OF ANTWERP 209 something to drink," I said to Roos exultantly, when my heart had ceased its pounding. Slip- ping off the straw cover I struck a match to see the result of my maiden attempt at looting. I didn't particularly care whether it was wine or brandy. Either would have tasted good. It was neither. It was a bottle of pepsin bitters ! At daybreak we started at full speed down the river for Doel, where we had left the car, as it was imperative that I should get to the end of a telegraph-wire, file my despatches, and get back to the city. They told me at Doel that the nearest telegraph office was at a little place called L'Ecluse, on the Dutch frontier, ten miles away. We were assured that there was a good road all the way and that we could get there and back in an hour. So we could have in ordinary tirhes, but these were extraordinary times and the Belgians, in order to make things as unpleasant as possible for the Germans, had opened the dikes and had begun to inundate the country. When we were about half-way to L'Ecluse, therefore, we found our way barred by a miniature river and no means of crossing it. It was in such 210 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS circumstances that Roos was invaluable. Col- lecting a force of peasants, he set them to work chopping down trees and with these trees we built a bridge sufficiently strong to support the weight of the car. Thus we came into La Clinge. But when the stolid Dutchman in charge of the telegraph office saw my despatches he shrugged his shoulders dis- couragingly. "It is not possible to send them from here," he explained. "We have no instrument here but have to telephone every- thing to Hulst, eight miles away. As I do not understand English it would be impossible to telephone your despatches." There seemed nothing for it but to walk to Hulst and back again, for the Dutch officials refused to permit me to take the car, which was a military one, across the frontier. Just at that moment a young Belgian priest Heaven bless him ! who had overheard the discussion, approached me. "If you will permit me, monsieur," said he, "I will be glad to take your despatches through to Hulst myself. I understand their importance. And it is well that the people in England and in America should learn what is happening here in Belgium and how bitterly THE FALL OF ANTWERP 211 we need their aid." Those despatches were, I believe, the only ones to come out of Antwerp during the bombardment. The fact that the newspaper readers in London and New York and San Francisco were enabled to learn within a few hours of what had happened in the great city on the Scheldt was due, not to any efforts of mine, but to this little Belgian priest. But when we got back to Doel the launch was gone. The boatman, evidently not relishing another taste of bombardment, had decamped, taking his launch with him. And neither offers of money nor threats nor pleadings could obtain me another one. For a time it looked as though getting back to Antwerp was as hopeless as getting to the moon. Just as I was on the point of giving up in despair, Roos appeared with a gold-laced official whom he introduced as the chief quarantine officer. "He is going to let you take the quarantine launch," said he. I don't know just what arguments Roos had brought to bear, and I was careful not to inquire, but ten minutes later I was sitting in lonely state on the after deck of a trim black yacht and we were streaking it up the river at twenty miles an hour. As I knew that the fall of the city was only a matter of hours, I refused to let Roos accompany me and take the chances of being made a prisoner by the Germans, but ordered him instead to take the car, while there was yet time, and make his way to Ostend. I never saw him again. By way of precaution, in case the Germans should already be in possession of the city, I had taken the two American flags from the car and hoisted them on the launch, one from the mainmast and the other at the taffrail. It was a certain satisfaction to know that the only craft that went the wrong way of the river during the bombardment flew the Stars and Stripes. As we came within sight of the quays, the bombardment, which had become inter- mittent, suddenly broke out afresh and I was compelled to use both bribes and threats the latter backed up by an automatic to induce the crew of the launch to run in and land me at the quay. An hour after I landed the city surrendered. The withdrawal of the garrison from Antwerp began on Thursday and, everything con- THE FALL OF ANTWERP 213 sidered, was carried out in excellent order, the troops being recalled in units from the outer line, marched through the city and across the pontoon bridge which spans the Scheldt and thence down the road to St. Nicolas to join the retreating field army. What was im- plied in the actual withdrawal from contact with the enemy will be appreciated when I explain the conditions which existed. In places the lines were not two hundred yards apart and for the defenders no movement was possible during the daylight. Many of the men in the firing-line had been on duty for nearly a hundred hours and were utterly worn out both mentally and physically. Such water and food as they had were sent to them at night, for any attempt to cross the open spaces in the daytime the Germans met with fierce bursts of rifle and machine-gun fire. The evacuation of the trenches was, therefore, a most difficult and dangerous operation and that it was carried out with so comparatively small loss speaks volumes for the ability of the officers to whom the direction of the movement was intrusted, as does the successful accomplishment of the retreat from Antwerp 214 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS into West Flanders along a road which was not only crowded with refugees but was constantly threatened by the enemy. The . chief danger was, of course, that the Germans would cross the river at Termonde in force and thus cut off the line of retreat toward the coast, forcing the whole Belgian army and the British contingent across the frontier of Holland. To the Belgian cavalry and Cara- bineer cyclists and to the armored cars was given the task of averting this catastrophe, and it is due to them that the Germans were held back for a sufficient time to enable practically the whole of the forces evacuating Antwerp to escape. That a large proportion of the British Naval Reserve Divisions were pushed across the frontier and interned was not due to any fault of the Belgians, but, in some cases at least, to their officers' miscon- ception of the attitude of Holland. Just as I was leaving Doel on my second trip up the river, a steamer loaded to the guards with British Naval Reservists swung in to the wharf, but, to my surprise, the men did not start to disembark. Upon inquiring of some one where they were bound for I was told that THE FALL OF ANTWERP 215 they were going to continue down the Scheldt to Terneuzen. Thereupon I ordered the launch to run alongside and clambered aboard the steamer. "I understand," said I, addressing a group of officers who seemed to be as much in authority as any one, "that you are keeping on down the river to Terneuzen ? That is not true, is it?" They looked at me as though I had walked into their club in Pall Mall and had spoken to them without an introduction. "It is," said one of them coldly. "What about it ? " "Oh, nothing much," said I, "except that three miles down this river you'll be in Dutch territorial waters, whereupon you will all be arrested and held as prisoners until the end of the war. It's really none of my business, I know, but I feel that I ought to warn you." "How very extraordinary," remarked one of them, screwing a monocle into his eye. "We're not at war with Holland, are we? So why should the bally Dutchmen want to trouble us ?" There was no use arguing with them, so I 216 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS dropped down the ladder into the launch and gave the signal for full steam ahead. As I looked back I saw the steamer cast off from the wharf and, swinging slowly out into the river, point her nose down-stream toward Holland. On Friday morning, October 9, General de Guise, the military Governor of Antwerp, ordered the destruction of the pontoon bridge across the Scheldt, which was now the sole avenue of retreat from the city. The mines which were exploded beneath it did more damage to the buildings along the water-front than to the bridge, however, only the middle spans of which were destroyed. When the last of the retreating Belgians came pouring down to the water-front a few hours later to find their only avenue of escape gone, for a time scenes of the wildest confusion ensued, the men frantically crowding aboard such vessels as remained at the wharfs or opening fire on those which were already in mid- stream and refused to return in answer to their summons. I wish to emphasize the fact, how- ever, that these were but isolated incidents; that these men were exhausted in mind and THE FALL OF ANTWERP 217 body from many days of fighting against hope- less odds; and that, as a whole, the Belgian troops bore themselves, in this desperate and trying situation, with a courage and coolness deserving of the highest admiration. I have heard it said in England that the British Naval Division was sent to Antwerp "to stiffen the Belgians." That may have been the intention, but the Belgians needed no stiffening. They did everything that any other troops could have done under the same circumstances and more. Nor did the men of the Naval Division, as has been frequently asserted in England, cover the Belgian retreat. The last troops to leave the trenches were Belgians, the last shots were fired by Belgians, and the Belgians were the last to cross the river. At noon on Friday, General de Guise and his staff having taken refuge in Fort St. Philippe, a few miles below Antwerp on the Scheldt, the officer in command of the last line of defence sent word to the burgomaster that his troops could hold out but a short time longer and suggested that the time had arrived for him to go out to the German lines under a flag of truce 2i 8 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS and secure the best terms possible for the city. As the burgomaster, M. de Vos, accompanied by Deputy Louis Franck, Communal Coun- cillor Ryckmans, and the Spanish Consul (it was expected that the American Consul- General would be one of the parlementams, but it was learned that he had left the day before for Ghent) went out of the city by one gate, half a dozen motor-cars filled with German soldiers entered through the Porte de Malines, sped down the broad, tree-shaded boulevards which lead to the centre of the city, and drew up before the Hotel de Ville. In answer to the summons of a young officer in a voluminous gray cloak the door was cautiously opened by a servant in the blue- and-silver livery of the municipality. "I have a message to deliver to the members of the Communal Council," said the officer politely. "The councillors are at dinner and cannot be disturbed," was the firm reply. "But if monsieur desires he can sit down and wait for them." So the young officer patiently seated himself on a wooden bench while his men ranged themselves along one side of the THE FALL OF ANTWERP 219 hall. After a delay of perhaps twenty minutes the door of the dining-room opened and a councillor appeared, wiping his mustache. "I understand that you have a message for the Council. Well, what is it?" he demanded pompously. The young officer clicked his heels together and bowed from the waist. "The message I am instructed to give you s sir," he said politely, "is that Antwerp is now a German city. You are requested by the general commanding his Imperial Majesty's forces so to inform your townspeople and to assure them that they will not be molested so long as they display no hostility towards our troops." While this dramatic little scene was being enacted in the historic setting of the Hotel de Ville, the burgomaster, unaware that the enemy was already within the city gates, was conferring with the German commander, who informed him that if the outlying forts were immediately surrendered no money in- demnity would be demanded from the city, though all merchandise found in its ware- houses would be confiscated. 220 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS The first troops to enter were a few score cyclists, who advanced cautiously from street to street and from square to square until they formed a network of scouts extending over the entire city. After them, at the quickstep, came a brigade of infantry and hard on the heels of the infantry clattered half a dozen batteries of horse-artillery. These passed through the city to the water-front at a spank- ing trot, unlimbered on the quays, and opened fire with shrapnel on the retreating Belgians, who had already reached the opposite side of the river. Meanwhile a company of infantry started at the double across the pontoon bridge, evidently unaware that its middle spans had been destroyed. Without an instant's hesitation two soldiers threw ofF their knap- sacks, plunged into the river, swam across the gap, clambered up onto the other portion of the bridge and, in spite of a heavy fire from , the fort at the Tete de Flandre, dashed forward to reconnoitre. That is the sort of deed that wins the Iron Cross. Within little more than an hour after reaching the water-front the Germans had brought up their engineers and pontoon wagons, the bridge had been repaired, THE FALL OF ANTWERP 221 the fire from Fort St. Anne had been silenced, and their troops were pouring across the river in a steady stream in pursuit of the Belgians. The grumble of field-guns, which continued throughout the night, told us that they had overtaken the Belgian rear-guard. Though the bombardment ended early on Friday afternoon, Friday night was by no means lacking in horrors, for early in the evening fires, which owed their origin to shells, broke out in a dozen parts of the city. The most serious one by far was in the narrow, winding thoroughfare known as the Marche aux Souliers, which runs from the Place Verte to the Place de Meir. By eight o'clock the entire western side of this street was a sheet of flame. The only spectators were groups of German soldiers, who watched the threatened destruction of the city with complete indiffer- ence, and several companies of firemen who had turned out, I suppose, from force of training, but who stood helplessly beside their empty hose lines, for there was no water. I firmly believe that the saving of a large part of Antwerp, including the cathedral, was due to an American resident, Mr. Charles WhithofF, 222 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS who, recognizing the extreme peril in which the city stood, hurried to the Hotel de Ville and suggested to the German military au- thorities that they should prevent the spread of flames by dynamiting the adjacent buildings. Acting promptly on this suggestion, a telephone message was sent to Brussels, and four hours later several automobiles loaded with hand- grenades came tearing into Antwerp. A squad of soldiers was placed under Mr. WhithorFs orders and, following his directions, they blew up a cordon of buildings and effectually isolated the flames. I shall not soon forget the figure of this young American, in bedroom slippers and smoking-jacket, coolly instructing German soldiers in the most approved methods of fire fighting. Nearly a week before the surrender of the city, the municipal water-works, near Lierre, had been destroyed by shells from the German siege-guns, so that when the Germans entered the city the sanitary conditions had become intolerable and an epidemic was impending. So scarce did water become during the last few days of the siege that when, on the evening of the surrender, I succeeded in obtaining THE FALL OF ANTWERP 225 a bottle of Apollinaris I debated with myself whether I should use it for washing or drinking. I finally compromised by drinking part of it and washing in the rest. The Germans were by no means blind to the peril of an epidemic, and, before they had been three hours in occupation of the city their medical corps was at work cleaning and disinfecting. Every contingency, in fact, seemed to have been anticipated and provided for. Every phase of the occupation was characterized by the German passion for method and order. The machinery of the municipal health department was promptly set in motion. The police were ordered to take up their duties as though no change in government had occurred. The train service to Brussels, Holland, and Ger- many was restored. Stamps surcharged "Fur Belgien" were put on sale at the post-office. The electric-lighting system was repaired and on Saturday night, for the first time since the Zeppelin's memorable visit the latter part of August, Antwerp was again ablaze with light. When, immediately after the occupation, I hurried to the American Consulate with the package of keys which I had brought from 224 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS Ghent, I was somewhat surprised, to put it mildly, to find the Consulate closed and to learn from the concierge, who, with his wife, had remained in the building throughout the bombardment, that Consul-General Diederich and his entire staff had left the city on Thursday morning. I was particularly surprised because I knew that, upon the departure of the British Consul-General, Sir Cecil Hertslet, some days before, the enormous British interests in Antwerp had been confided to American protection. The concierge, who knew me and seemed decidedly relieved to see me, made no objection to opening the Consulate and letting me in. While deliberating as to the best method of transmitting the keys which had been intrusted to me to the German military Governor without informing him of the embarrassing fact that the American and British interests in the city were without official representation, those Americans and British who had remained in the city during the bombardment began to drop in. Some of them were frightened and all of them were plainly worried, the women in particular, among whom were several British Red Cross The retreat from Antwerp. The Belgian army passing through Lokoren. The rear-guard of the retreating Antwerp garrison. a -a 2 ; THE FALL OF ANTWERP 225 nurses, seeming fearful that the soldiers might get out of hand. As there was no one else to look after these people, and as I had formerly been in the consular service myself, and as they said quite frankly that they would feel relieved if I took charge of things, I decided to "sit on the lid," as it were, until the Consul- General's return. In assuming charge of British and American affairs in Antwerp, at the request and with the approval of what re- mained of the Anglo-American colony in that city, I am quite aware that I acted in a manner calculated to scandalize those gentlemen who have been steeped in the ethics of diplomacy. As one youth attached to the American Embassy in London remarked, it was "the damnedest piece of impertinence" of which he had ever heard. But he is quite a young gentleman, and has doubtless had more ex- perience in ballrooms than in bombarded cities. I immediately wrote a brief note to the German commander transmitting the keys and informing him that, in the absence of the American Consul-General I had assumed charge of American and British interests in Antwerp, and expected the fullest protection 226 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS for them, to which I received a prompt and courteous reply assuring me that foreigners would not be molested in any way. In the absence of the consular staff, Thompson volunteered to act as messenger and deliver my message to the German commander. While on his way to the Hotel de Ville, which was being used as staff headquarters, a German infantry regiment passed him in a narrow street. Because he failed to remove his hat to the colors a German officer struck him twice with the flat of his sword, only desisting when Thompson pulled a silk American flag from his pocket. Upon learning of this occurrence I vigorously protested to the military authorities, who offered profuse apologies for the incident and assured me that the officer would be punished if Thompson could identify him. Consul-General Diederich returned to Ant- werp on Monday and I left the same day for the nearest telegraph station in Holland. The whole proceeding was irregular and unauthorized, of course, but for that matter so was the German invasion of Belgium. In any event, it seemed the thing to do and I did it, and, under the same circumstances, I should do precisely the same thing over again. THE FALL OF ANTWERP 227 Though a very large force of German troops passed through Antwerp during Friday night in pursuit of the retreating Belgians, the triumphal entry of the victors did not be- gin until Saturday afternoon, when sixty thousand men passed in review before the military Governor, Admiral von Schroeder, and General von Beseler, who, surrounded by a glittering staff, sat their horses in front of the royal palace. So far as onlookers were concerned, the Germans might as well have marched through the streets of ruined Babylon. Thompson and I, standing in the windows of the American Consulate, were the only spectators in the entire length of the mile- long Place de Meir which is the Broadway of Antwerp of the great military pageant. The streets were absolutely deserted; every building was dark, every window shuttered; in a thoroughfare which had blossomed with bunting a few days before, not a flag was to be seen. I think that even the Germans were a little awed by the deathly silence that greeted them. As Thompson dryly remarked, "It reminds me of a circus that's come to town the day before it's expected." 228 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS For five hours that mighty host poured through the canyons of brick and stone: "Above the bugles' din, Sweating beneath their haversacks, With rifles bristling on their backs. The dusty men trooped in." Company after company, regiment after regiment, brigade after brigade swept by until our eyes grew weary with watching the ranks of gray under the slanting lines of steel. As they marched they sang, the high buildings along the Place de Meir and the Avenue de Keyser echoing to their voices thundering out "Die Wacht am Rhein," "Deutschland, Deutschland uber Alles" and " Ein Feste Burg 1st Unser Gott." Though the singing was mechanical, like the faces of the men who sang, the mighty volume of sound, punctuated at regular intervals by the shrill music of the fifes and the rattle of the drums, and accompanied always by the tramp, tramp, tramp of iron-shod boots, was one of the most impressive things that I have ever heard. Each regiment was headed by its field music and colors, and when darkness fell and the street lights were turned on, the shriek of the fifes and the clamor of THE FALL OF ANTWERP 229 the drums and the rhythmic tramp of march- ing feet reminded me of a torchlight political parade at home. At the head of the column rode a squadron of gendarmes the policemen of the army gorgeous in uniforms of bottle-green and silver and mounted on sleek and shining horses. After them came the infantry: solid columns of gray-clad figures with the silhouettes of the mounted officers rising at intervals above the forest of spike-crowned helmets. After the infantry came the field artillery, the big guns rattling and rumbling over the cobblestones, the cannoneers sitting with folded arms and heels drawn in, and wooden faces, like servants on the box of a carriage. These were the same guns that had been in almost constant action for the preceding fortnight and that for forty hours had poured death and destruction into the city, yet both men and horses were in the very pink of condition, as keen as razors, and as hard as nails; the blankets, the buckets, the knapsacks, the intrenching tools were all strapped in their appointed places, and the brown leather harness was polished like a lady's tan shoes. After the field-batteries came the 230 FIGHTING IN FLANDERS horse-artillery and after the horse-artillery the pompoms each drawn by a pair of sturdy draught-horses driven with web reins by a soldier sitting on the limber and after the pompoms an interminable line of machine guns, until one wondered where Krupp's found the time and the steel to make them all. Then, heralded by a blare of trumpets and a crash of kettle-drums, came the cavalry; Cuirassiers with their steel helmets and breastplates covered with gray linen, Hussars in befrogged gray jackets and fur busbies, also linen-covered, and finally the Uhlans, riding amid a forest of lances under a cloud of fluttering pennons. But this was not all, nor nearly all, for after the Uhlans came the sailors of the Naval Division, brown-faced, bewhiskered fellows with their round, flat caps tilted rakishly and the roll of the sea in their gait; then the Bavarians in dark blue, the Saxons in light blue, and the Austrians the same who had handled the big guns so effectively in uniforms of a beautiful silver gray. Accompanying one of the Bavarian regiments was a victoria drawn by a fat white horse, with two soldiers on the box. Horse and carriage were decorated with flowers as THE FALL OF ANTWERP 231 though for a floral parade at Nice; even the soldiers had flowers pinned to their caps and nosegays stuck in their tunics. The carriage was evidently a sort of triumphal chariot dedicated to the celebration of the victory, for it was loaded with hampers of champagne and violins ! The army which captured Antwerp was, first, last and all the time, a fighting army. There was not a Landsturm or a Landwehr regiment in it. The men were as pink- cheeked as athletes; they marched with the buoyancy of men in perfect health. And yet the human element was lacking; there was none of the pomp and panoply commonly associated with war; these men in gray were merely wheels and cogs and bolts and screws in a great machine the word which has been used so often of the German army, yet must be repeated, because there is no other whose only purpose is death. As that great fighting machine swung past, remorseless as a trip- hammer, efficient as a steam roller, I could not but marvel how the gallant, chivalrous, and heroic but ill-prepared little army of Belgium, had held it back so long. FOUR TIMELY BOOKS OF INTERNATIONAL IMPORTANCE I ACCUSE (/'ACCUSE /) By -a German. A Scathing Arraignment of the German War Policy. At this vital time in the nation's history every patriotic American should read and reread this wonderful book and learn the absurdity of the German excuse that they wanted a "Place in the Sun." Learn how the German masses were deluded with the idea that they were making a defensive war to protect the Fatherland. Let the author of this illuminating book again show the sacrilege of claiming a Christian God as a Teutonic ally and riddle once more the divine right of kings. PAN-GERMANISM. By Roland G. Usher. The clear, graphic style gives it a popular appeal that sets it miles at>art from the ordinary treatise, and for the reader who wishes to g5t a rapid focus on the world events of the present, perhaps no book written will be more interesting. It is the only existing forecast of exactly the present development o: events in Europe. It is, besides, a brisk, clear, almost primer- like reduction of the complex history of Europe during the last forty years to a simple, connected story clear enough to the most casual reader. THE CHALLENGE OF THE FUTURE. By Roland G. Usher. A glance into America's future by the man who, in his book'PAN- GERMANISM, foretold with such amazing accuracy the coming of tae present European events. An exceedingly live and timely book that is bound to be read and discussed widely because it strikes to tae heart of American problems, and more especially because it hits right and left at ideas that have become deep-seated convictions in many American minds. .THE EVIDENCE IN THE CASE. By James M. Beck, LL. D. , Formerly Assistant Attorney-Genera/ of the United States, Author of the "War and Hu- manity." With an Introduction by the Hon. Joseph H. Choate^Late U. S. Ambassador to Great Britain. ' [ No work on the War has made a deeper impression throughout the world than "The Evidence in the Case," a calm, dispassionate, but forceful discussion of the moral responsibility for the present war as disclosed by the diplomatic papers. Arnold Bennett says that it "is certainly by far the most convincing indictment of Germany in existence." GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK THE NOVELS OF WINSTON CHURCHILL THE INSIDE OF THE CUP. Illustrated by Howard Giles. The Reverend John Hodder is called to a fashionable church in a middle- western city. He knows little of modern problems aid in his theology is as orthodox as the rich men who control his cturch could desire. But the facts of modern life are thrust upon him; an awakening follows and in the end he works out a solution. A FAR COUNTRY. Illustrated by Herman Pfeifer. , This novel is concerned with big problems of the day. As The Inside of the Cup gets down to the essentials in its discussion of re- ligion, so A Far Country deals in a story that is intense and dra- matic, with other vital issues confronting the twentieth century. A MODERN CHRONICLE. Illustrated by J. H. Gardner Soper. This, Mr. Churchill's first great presentation of the Eternal Feminine, is throughout a profound study of a fascinating young American woman. It is frankly a modern love story. MR. CREWE'S CAREER. Illus. by A. I. Keller and Kinneys. A new England state is under the political domination of a -ail- way and Mr. Crewe, a millionaire, seizes a moment when the ctuse of the people is being espoused by an ardent young attorney, to fur- ther his own interest in a political way. The daughter of the rail- way president plays no small part in the situation. THE CROSSING. Illustrated by S. Adamson and L. Baylis. Describing the battle of Fort Moultrie, the blazing of the Ke- tucky wilderness, the expedition of Clark and his handful of follow- ers in Illinois, the beginning of civilization along the Ohio ind Mississippi, and the treasonable schemes against Washington. CONISTON. Illustrated by Florence Scovel Shinn. A deft blending of love and ppli tics. A New Englander is the hero, a crude man who rose to political prominence by his own pow. ers, and then surrendered all for the love of a woman. THE CELEBRITY. An episode. 1 An inimitable bit of comedy describing an interchange of per- sonalities between a celebrated author and a bicycle salesman. It is the purest, keenest fun and is American to the core. THE CRISIS. Illustrated with scenes from the Photo-Play. A book that presents the great crisis in our national life with splendid power and with a sympathy, a sincerity, and a patriotism that are inspiring. RICHARD CARVEL. Illustrated by Malcolm Frazer. An historical novel which gives a real and vivid picture of Co- lonial times, and is good, clean, spirited reading in all its phases and interesting throughout. GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK JOHN FOX, JR'S. STORIES OF THE KENTUCKY MOUNTAINS May be hid wherever books are sold. Ask for Cresset and Donlap's list THE TRAIL OF THE LONESOME PINE./ lUustrated by F. C. Yohn. The "lonesome pine" from which the story takes its name was a tall tree that stood in solitary splendor on a mountain top. The fame of the pine lured a young engineer through Kentucky to catch the trail, and when he finally climbed to its shelter he found not only the pine but the foot-prints of a girl. And the girl proved to be lovely, piquant, and the trail of these girlish foot-prints led the young engineer a madder chase than "the trail of the lonesome pine." THE LITTLE SHEPHERD OF KINGDOM COME lUustrated by F. C. Yohn. This is a story of Kentucky, in a settlement known as "King- dom Come." It is a life rude, semi-barbarous; but natural and honest, from which often springs the flower of civilization. " Chad." the "little shepherd" did not know who he was nor whence he came he had just wandered from door to door since early childhood, seeking shelter with kindly mountaineers who gladly fathered and mothered this waif about whom there was such a mystery a charming waif, by the way, who could play the banjo better that anyone else in the mountains. A'KNIGHT OF THE CUMBERLAND. lUustrated by F. C. Yohn. The scenes are laid along the waters of the Cumberland* the lair of moonshiner and f eudsman. The knight is a moon- shiner's son, and the heroine a beautiful girl perversely chris- tened "The Blight." Two impetuous young Southerners' fall under the spell of "The Blight's " charms and she learns what a large part jealousy and pistols have in the love making of the mountaineers. Included in this volume is " HeU fer-Sartain" and other stories, some of Mr. Fox's most entertaining Cumberland valley narratives. Ask for complete fret list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction