That was a very timely picture.  It filled a real demand.  For spies were at that time looming distressingly large in the public mind.  The deeds they had done, or were about to do, cast a cold fear over men by day and haunted them by night.  They were in the Allies’ councils, infesting the army, planning destruction to the navy.  Any wild tale got credence, adding its bit to the general paralysis, and producing a vociferous demand that “something be done.”  The people were assured that all culprits were being duly sentenced and shot.  But there was no proof of it.  There were no pictures thereof extant.  And that is what the public wanted.

“Give the public what it wants,” was the motto of this enterprising newspaper man.  Herewith he supplied tangible evidence on which they could feast their eyes and soothe their nerves.

As to the ethics of these pictures, they are “true” in that they are faithful to reality.  In this case the photographer acted up to his professional knowledge and staged the pictures as he had actually seen the spy shot.  They must find their justification on the same basis as fiction, which is “the art of falsifying facts for the sake of truth.”  And who would begrudge them the securing of a few pictures with comparative ease?

Most of the pictures which the public casually gazes on have been secured at a price—­and a large one, too.  The names of these men who go to the front with cameras, rather than with rifles or pens, are generally unknown.  They are rarely found beneath the pictures, yet where would be our vivid impression of courage in daring and of skill in doing, of cunning strategy upon the field of battle, of wounded soldiers sacrificing for their comrades, if we had no pictures?  A few pictures are faked, but behind most pictures there is another tale of daring and of strategy, and that is the tale concerning the man who took it.  That very day thrice these same men risked their lives.

The apparatus loaded in the car, we were off again.  Past a few barricades of paving-stones and wagons, past the burned houses which marked the place where the Germans had come within five miles of Ghent, we encountered some uniformed Belgians who looked quite as dismal and dispirited as the fog which hung above the fields.  They were the famous Guarde Civique of Belgium.  Our Union Jack, flapping in the wind, was very likely quite the most thrilling spectacle they had seen in a week, and they hailed it with a cheer and a cry of “Vive l’Angleterre!” (Long live England!) The Guarde Civique had a rather inglorious time of it.  Wearisomely in their wearisome-looking uniform, they stood for hours on their guns or marched and counter-marched in dreary patrolling, often doomed not even to scent the battle from afar off.

Whenever we were called to a halt for the examination of our passports, these men crowded around and begged for newspapers.  We held up our stock, and they would clamor for the ones with pictures.  The English text was unintelligible to most of them, but the pictures they could understand, and they bore them away to enjoy the sight of other soldiers fighting, even if they themselves were denied that excitement.  Our question to them was always the same, “Where are the Germans?”