At the end of the show they invited me to fill out their automobile on the morrow.  Nearly every other motor had been commandeered by the authorities for the “Service Militaire” and bore on the front the letters “S.  M.”  Our car was by no means in the blue-ribbon class.  It had a hesitating disposition and the authorities, regarding it as more of a liability than an asset, had passed it over.

But the correspondents counted it a great stroke of fortune to have any car at all; and, that they might continue to have it, they kept it at night carefully locked in a room in the hotel.

They had their chauffeur under like supervision.  He was one of their kind, and with the cunning of a diplomat obtained the permit to buy petrol, most precious of all treasures in the field of war.  Indeed, gasoline, along with courage and discipline, completed the trinity of success in the military mind.

With the British flag flying at the front, we sped away next morning on the road to Termonde.  At Melle we came upon the blazing cottages we had seen pictured the night before.  Here we encountered a roving band of Belgian soldiers who were in a free and careless mood and evinced a ready willingness to put themselves at our disposal.  Under the command of the photographers, they charged across the fields with fixed bayonets, wriggled up through the grass, or, standing behind the trenches, blazed away with their guns at an imaginary enemy.  They did some good acting, grim and serious as death.  All except one.

This youth couldn’t suppress his sense of humor.  He could not, or would not, keep from laughing, even when he was supposed to be blowing the head off a Boche.  He was properly disciplined and put out of the game, and we went on with our maneuvers to the accompaniment of the clicking cameras until the photographers had gathered in a fine lot of realistic fighting-line pictures.

One of the photographers sat stolidly in the automobile smoking his cigarette while the others were reaping their harvest.

“Why don’t you take these too?” I asked.

“Oh,” he replied, “I’ve been sending in so much of that stuff that I just got a telegram from my paper saying, ’Pension off that Belgian regiment which is doing stunts in the trenches.’”

While his little army rested from their maneuvers the Director-in-Chief turned to me and said: 

“Wouldn’t you like to have a photograph of yourself in these war-surroundings, just to take home as a souvenir?”

That appealed to me.  After rejecting some commonplace suggestions, he exclaimed:  “I have it.  Shot as a German Spy.  There’s the wall to stand up against; and we’ll pick a crack firing-squad out of these Belgians.  A little bit of all right, eh?”

I acquiesced in the plan and was led over to the wall while a movie-man whipped out a handkerchief and tied it over my eyes.  The director then took the firing squad in hand.  He had but recently witnessed the execution of a spy where he had almost burst with a desire to photograph the scene.  It had been excruciating torture to restrain himself.  But the experience had made him feel conversant with the etiquette of shooting a spy, as it was being done amongst the very best firing-squads.  He made it now stand him in good stead.