and bits, the uniforms of many regiments flung out hurriedly from barrack cupboards; rifles, swords, and boots were heaped on to beds of straw, and upon the top of them lay men exhausted to the point of death, so that their heads flopped and lolled as the carts came jolting through the streets.  Armoured cars with mitrailleuses, motor-cars slashed and plugged by German bullets, forage carts and ambulances, struggled by in a tide of traffic between bodies of foot-soldiers slouching along without any pride, but dazed with weariness.  Their uniforms were powdered with the dust of the roads, their faces were blanched and haggard for lack of food and sleep.  Some of them had a delirious look and they stared about them with rolling eyes in which there was a gleam of madness.  Many of these men were wounded, and spattered with their blood.  Their bandages were stained with scarlet splotches, and some of them were so weak that they left their ranks and sat in doorways, or on the kerb-stones, with their heads drooping sideways.  Many another man, footsore and lame, trudged along on one boot and a bandaged sock, with the other boot slung to his rifle barrel.

Riding alone between two patrols of mounted men was a small boy on a high horse.  He was a fair-haired lad of twelve or so, in a Belgian uniform, with a tasselled cap over one ear, and as he passed the Dunquerquoises clapped hands and called out:  “Bravo!  Bravo!” He took the ovation with a grin and held his head high.

The cafes in this part of France were crowded with Belgian officers of all grades.  I had never seen so many generals together or such a medley of uniforms.  They saluted each other solemnly, and there were emotional greetings between friends and brothers who had not seen each other after weeks of fighting in different parts of the lines, in this city across the border.  Most of the officers were fine, sturdy, young fellows of stouter physique than the French among whom I had been roving.  But others had the student look and stared mournfully from gold-rimmed spectacles.  There were many middle-aged men among them who wore military uniforms, but without a soldier’s ease or swagger.  When Germany tore up that “scrap of paper” which guaranteed the integrity of Belgium, every patriotic man there volunteered for the defence of his country and shouldered a rifle, though he had never fired a blank cartridge, and put on some kind of uniform, though he had never drilled in a barrack square.  Lawyers and merchants, schoolmasters and poets, actors and singers, farmers and peasants, rushed to take up arms, and when the vanguards of the German army struck across the frontier they found themselves confronted not only by the small regular army of Belgium, but by the whole nation.  Even the women helped to dig the trenches at Liege, and poured boiling water over Uhlans who came riding into Belgian villages.  It was the rising of a whole people which led to so much ruthlessness and savage