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 high road, 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-bye, Piccadilly! 
Farewell, Leicester Square!  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 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 anyone 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 vigour and courage and determination 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 reorganization 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 rushed into trenches which were in most cases unprotected by head-covers, and, though unsupported 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 armoured 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 armour-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