“Simply because the Germans are not fools,” replied the movie-man; “when they mutilate a victim, they go through with it to the finish.  They take care not to let telltales go straggling out to damn them.”

Some one proposed that the only way to get a first-class atrocity picture was to fake it.  It was a big temptation, and a fine field for the exercise of their inventive genius.  But on this issue the chorus of dissent was most emphatic.

The nearest that I came to an atrocity was when in a car with Van Hee, the American vice-consul at Ghent.  Van Hee was a man of laconic speech and direct action.  I told him what Lethbridge, the British consul, had told me; viz., that the citizens of Ghent must forthwith erect a statue of Van Hee in gold to commemorate his priceless services.  “The gold idea appeals to me, all right,” said Van Hee, “but why put it in a statue!” He routed me out at five one morning to tell me that I could go through the German lines with Mr. Fletcher into Brussels.  We left the Belgian Army cheering the Stars and Stripes, and came to the outpost of sharpshooters.  Crouching behind a barricade, they were looking down the road.  They didn’t know whether the Germans were half a mile, two miles, or five miles down that road.

Into that uncertain No-Man’s-Land we drove with only our honking to disturb the silence, while our minds kept growing specters of Uhlans the size of Goliath.  Fletcher and I kept up a hectic conversation upon the flora and fauna of the country.  But Van Hee, being of strong nerves, always gleefully brought the talk back to Uhlans.

“How can you tell an Uhlan?” I faltered.

“If you see a big gray man on horseback, with a long lance, spearing children,” said Van Hee, “why, that’s an Uhlan.”

Turning a sharp corner, we ran straight ahead into a Belgian bicycle division—­scouting in this uncertain zone.  In a flash they were off their wheels, rifles at their shoulders and fingers on triggers.

Two boys, gasping with fear, thrust their guns up into our very faces.  In our gray coats we had been taken for a party of German officers.  They were positive that a peasant was hanging in a barn not far away.  But we insisted that our nerves had had enough for the day.  Even Van Hee was willing to let the conversation drift back to flowers and birds.  We drove along in chastened spirit until hailed by the German outpost, about five miles from where we had left the Belgians.  No-Man’s-Land was wide in those days.

But what is it that really constitutes an atrocity?  In a refugee shed, sleeping on the straw, we found an old woman of 88.  All that was left to her was her shawl, her dress, and the faint hope of seeing two sons for whom she wept.  Extreme old age is pitiful in itself.  With homelessness it is tragic.  But such homeless old age as this, with scarce one flickering ray of hope, is double-distilled tragedy.  If some marauder had bayoneted her, and she had died therefrom, it would have been a kindly release from all the anguish that the future now held in store for her.  Of course that merciful act would have constituted an atrocity, because it would have been a breach in the rules of the war game.