was criss-crossed by a perfect network of rivers and brooks and canals and ditches; the highways and the railways, which had to be raised to keep them from being washed out by the periodic inundations, were so thickly screened by trees as to be quite useless for purposes of observation; and in the rare places where a rise in the ground might have enabled one to get a comprehensive view of the surrounding country, dense groves of trees or red-and-white villages almost invariably intervened.  One could be within a few hundred yards of the firing-line and literally not see a thing save the fleecy puffs of bursting shrapnel.  Indeed, I don’t know what we should have done had it not been for the church towers.  These were conveniently sprinkled over the landscape—­ every cluster of houses seemed to have one—­and did their best to make up for the region’s topographical shortcomings.  The only disadvantage attaching to the use of the church-spires as places to view the fighting from was that the military observers and the officers controlling the fire of the batteries used them for the same purpose.  The enemy knew this, of course, and almost the first thing he did, therefore, was to open fire on them with his artillery and drive those observers out.  This accounts for the fact that in many sections of Belgium there is not a church-spire left standing.  When we ascended a church tower, therefore, for the purpose of obtaining a general view of an engagement, we took our chances and we knew it.  More than once, when the enemy got the range and their shells began to shriek and yowl past the belfry in which I was stationed, I have raced down the rickety ladders at a speed which, under normal conditions, would probably have resulted in my breaking my neck.  In view of the restrictions imposed upon correspondents in the French and Russian theatres of war, I suppose that instead of finding fault with the seating arrangements I should thank my lucky stars that I did not have to write my dispatches with the aid of an ordnance-map and a guide-book in a hotel bedroom a score or more of miles from the firing-line.

The Belgian field army consisted of six divisions and a brigade of cavalry and numbered, on paper at least, about 180,000 men.  I very much doubt, however, if King Albert had in the field at anyone time more than 120,000 men—­a very large proportion of whom were, of course, raw recruits.  Now the Belgian army, when all is said and done, was not an army according to the Continental definition; it was not much more than a glorified police force, a militia.  No one had ever dreamed that it would be called upon to fight, and hence, when war came, it was wholly unprepared.  That it was able to offer the stubborn and heroic resistance which it did to the advance of the German legions speaks volumes for Belgian stamina and courage.  Many of the troops were armed with rifles of an obsolete pattern, the supply of ammunition was insufficient, and though