Now if Van Calck hadn’t come tearing into Ghent in his wheeled fortress on a sunny September morning he wouldn’t have come upon a motor-car containing two German soldiers who had lost their way; if he had not met them, the two Germans would not have been wounded in the dramatic encounter which ensued; if the Germans had not been wounded it would not have been necessary for Mr. Julius Van Hee, the American Vice-Consul, to pay a hurried visit to General von Boehn, the German commander, to explain that the people of Ghent were not responsible for the affair and to beg that no retaliatory measures be taken against the city; if Mr. Van Hee had not visited General von Boehn the question of the attitude of the American Press would not have come up for discussion; and if it had not been discussed, General von Boehn would not have sent me an invitation through Mr. Van Hee to dine with him at his headquarters and hear the German side of the question.

But perhaps I had better begin at the beginning.  On September 8, then, the great German army which was moving from Brussels on France was within a few miles of Ghent.  In the hope of inducing the Germans not to enter the city, whose large and turbulent working population would, it was feared, cause trouble in case of a military occupation, the burgomaster went out to confer with the German commander.  An agreement was finally arrived at whereby the Germans consented to march around Ghent if certain requirements were complied with.  These were that no Belgian troops should occupy the city, that the Garde Civique should be disarmed and their weapons surrendered, and that the municipality should supply the German forces with specified quantities of provisions and other supplies—­the chief item, by the way, being a hundred thousand cigars.

The burgomaster had not been back an hour when a military motor-car containing two armed German soldiers appeared in the city streets.  It transpired afterwards that they had been sent out to purchase medical supplies and, losing their way, had entered Ghent by mistake.  At almost the same moment that the German car entered the city from the south a Belgian armoured motor-car, armed with a machine-gun and with a crew of three men and driven by the former Pittsburg chauffeur, entered from the east on a scouting expedition.  The two cars, both travelling at high speed, encountered each other at the head of the Rue de l’Agneau, directly in front of the American Consulate.  Vice-Consul Van Hee, standing in the doorway, was an eyewitness of what followed.

The Germans, taken completely by surprise at the sight of the grim war-car in its coat of elephant-grey bearing down upon them, threw on their power and attempted to escape, the man sitting beside the driver opening an ineffectual fire with his carbine.  Regardless of the fact that the sidewalks were crowded with spectators, the Belgians opened on the fleeing Germans with their machine-gun, which spurted lead as a garden-hose spurts