The Allies, continues Col. Swinton, have made great sacrifices to defend against tremendous odds a line that could only be maintained by making these sacrifices; but the fact that the situation has been relieved is no reason for assuming that the enemy has abandoned his intention of pressing through to the sea. The writer points out that the Germans continue to attack with great courage, but little abated by failure, and, while they have not succeeded in gaining the Straits of Dover, they have been enabled to consolidate their position on the western front and retain all but a small portion of Belgium.

"As well as they have fought, however," continues the narrative, "it is doubtful if their achievements are commensurate with their losses, which recently have been largely due to a lack of training and a comparative lack of discipline of the improvised units they put in the field."

Col. Swinton concludes with the statement that, as the war is going to be one of exhaustion, after the regular armies of the belligerents have done their work it will be upon the raw material of the countries concerned that final success will depend.



XIII.

*The Lull in November.*

[Dated Nov. 29.]

General inactivity is recorded along the English front, with the Germans pressing the attack in one quarter against the Indian troops, who have been extending their trenches in an endeavor to get in close quarters with the enemy. There has been some shelling of the rear of our front line south of the Lys, but this form of annoyance diminishes daily along the whole front. Sniping, however, is carried on almost incessantly. There seems to be little doubt that the Germans are employing civilians, either willingly or unwillingly, to dig trenches; some civilians have been seen and shot while engaged in this work.

While it is necessary to accept the evidence of all prisoners with caution, there is a change in the views expressed by some officers captured recently which appears to be genuine. They admit the failure of the German strategy and profess to take a gloomy view of the future. At the same time it must be confessed that as yet there is no sign that their view is that generally held by the enemy, nor has there been any definite indication of a lack of morale among the German troops.

The highways of Northern France are crowded with men responding to the various mobilization orders issued by the French Government.

Thousands of such troops were encountered in the course of a short automobile trip. The strange procession includes a curious mixture of types. A considerable proportion of these new drafts are composed of middle-aged men of good physique and likely young men from the countryside.

The change within the last few days of what may be termed the atmosphere of the battlefield has been marked. The noise of the cannonading has now decreased to such an extent that for hours at a time nothing is heard but the infrequent boom of one of the heavy guns of the Allies, the occasional rattle of machine guns, and the intermittent fire of snipers on either side. So far as the use of explosives is concerned, the greatest activity is found in local attacks with hand grenades and short-range howitzers. The enemy has practically ceased his efforts to break through the line by assaults, and he is now devoting his energies to the same type of siege operations which have been familiar to the Allies since the beginning of the battle of the Aisne.

Subterranean life is the general rule in the neighborhood of the firing line. Even those men not actually engaged in fighting live in underground quarters. Some of these quarters, called "funk-holes" are quite elaborate and comfortable and contain many conveniences not found in the trenches on the firing line. They communicate with the firing line by zigzag approach trenches which make enfilading impossible.

Attacks are made on the firing line trenches by blind saps, which are constructed by a special earth borer. When this secret tunnel reaches the enemy's trench, an assault is delivered amid a shower of hand grenades. The stormers endeavor to burst their way through the opening and then try to work along the trench. Machine guns are quickly brought up to repel a counter attack. Most of this fighting takes place at such close range that the guns on either side cannot be fired at the enemy's infantry without great risk of hitting their own men. Bombs have come to take the place of artillery, and they are being used in enormous quantities.

The short-range howitzers are of three types, and those used by the Germans have come to be termed the "Jack Johnson" of close attack. The smaller bombs and grenades thrown by hand, although local in action, are very unpleasant, particularly between the inclosed space of a trench. These grenades are thrown continuously by both sides, and every trench assault is first preceded and then accompanied by showers of these murderous missiles. This kind of fighting is very deadly, and owing to the difficulty of observation it is at times somewhat blind. This difficulty has in a measure been decreased, however, by the use of the hyperscope, an instrument which works very much like the periscope on a submarine. It permits an observer to look out over the top of a parapet without raising his head above the protection of the trench.



*THE DAWN OF A NEW DAY.*

By EDWARD NEVILLE VOSE.

THE old year dies 'mid gloom and woe— The saddest year since Christ was born— And those who battle in the snow All anxious-eyed look for the morn— The morn when wars shall be no more, The morn when Might shall cease to reign, When hushed shall be the cannons' roar And Peace shall rule the earth again.

As we from far survey the fray And strive to succor those who fall, Let each give thanks that not today To us the clarion bugles call— That not today to us 'tis said: "Bow down the knee, or pay the cost Till all ye loved are maimed or dead, Till all ye had is wrecked and lost."

Should that grim summons to us come God grant we'd all play heroes' parts, And bravely fight for land and home While red blood flows in loyal hearts. But now a duty nobler far Has come to us in this great day— We are the nations' guiding star, They look to us to lead the way.

They look to us to lead the way To liberty for all the world, The dawning of that better day When war's torn banners shall be furled— The day when men of every race Their right divine shall clearly see To rule themselves by their own grace, Forever and forever free.



*"Human Documents" of Battle*

*By Men Who Saw or Took Part./*

Written in the hurry and confusion of battle, and without the opportunity at hand to check up the impressions given, it is of course likely that these dispatches from special correspondents may contain many things which history will correct. But as human documents they have no equal, and history will not be able, however she may correct matters of detail and partisan feeling, to offer anything which will give a more vivid impression of the glare and roar of battle than do these letters, penned by men actually in or near the firing line at the moment of great events. As such THE TIMES offers them, not as frozen history, but as history in the making, and has no apologies to make for an error of fact here and there, for those very errors are in a way testimony that adds value to the story—the story of honest and hard-driven human beings writing what was passing before their eyes.



*The German Entry Into Brussels*

*By John Boon of The London Daily Mail.*

BRUSSELS, via Alost, Aug. 20. (Thursday,) 10 P.M.

The Germans entered Brussels shortly after 2 P.M. today without firing a shot.

Yielding to the dictates of reason and humanity, the civil Government at the last moment disbanded the Civic Guard, which the Germans would not recognize. The soldiers and ordinary police were then entrusted with the maintenance of order.

After a day of wild panic and slumberless nights the citizens remained at their windows. Few sought their couches.

The morning broke brilliantly. The city was astir early, and on all lips were the words: "They are here" or "They are coming!"

The "they" referred to were already outside the boundaries in great force. The artillery was packed off on the road to Waterloo. Horse, foot, and sapper were packed deep on the Louvain and Tervervueren roads.

An enterprising motorist came in with the information and the crowds in the busy centres immediately became calm. At 11 o'clock it was reported that an officer with half a troop of hussars bearing white flags had halted outside the Louvain gate.

The Burgomaster and four Sheriffs went in a motor car to meet the officers. They were conducted to the German military authorities at the head of the column. The meeting took place outside the barracks of the carabineers.

The Burgomaster claimed for the citizens their rights under the laws of war regulating an unfortified capital. When roughly asked if he was prepared to surrender the city, with the threat that otherwise it would be bombarded, the Burgomaster said he would do so. He also decided to remove his scarf of office.

The discussion was brief. When the Burgomaster handed over his scarf it was handed back to him and he was thus intrusted for the time being with the civil control of the citizens. The Germans gave him plainly to understand that he would be held responsible for any overt act on the part of the populace against the Germans.

From noon until 2 o'clock the crowds waited expectantly. Shortly after 2 o'clock the booming of cannon and later the sound of military music conveyed to the people of Brussels the intimation that the triumphant march of the enemy on the ancient city had begun.

On they came, preceded by a scouting party of Uhlans, horse, foot, and artillery and sappers, with a siege train complete.

A special feature of the procession was 100 motor cars on which quick-firers were mounted. Every regiment and battery was headed by a band, horse or foot.

Now came the drums and fifes, now the blare of brass and soldiers singing "Die Wacht am Rhein" and "Deutschland Ueber Alles."

Along the Chaussee de Louvain, past St. Josse and the Botanical Gardens, to the great open space in front of the Gare du Nord, the usual lounging place of the tired twaddlers of the city, swept the legions of the man who broke the peace of Europe.

Among the cavalry were the famous Brunswick Death's Head Hussars and their companions on many bloody fields, the Zeiten Hussars. But where was the glorious garb of the German troops, the cherry-colored uniforms of the horsemen and the blue of the infantry? All is greenish, earth-color gray. All the hel- [Transcriber: Text missing in original.] are painted gray. The gun carriages are gray. Even the pontoon bridges are gray.

To the quick-step beat of the drums the Kaiser's men march to the great Square Charles Rogier. Then at the whistling sound of the word of command—for the sonorous orders of the German officers seemed to have gone the way of the brilliant uniforms—the gray-clad ranks broke into the famous goose step, while the good people of Liege and Brussels gazed at the passing wonder with mouths agape.

At the railroad station the great procession defiled to the boulevards and thence marched to encamp on the heights of the city called Kochelberg. It was truly a sight to have gladdened the eyes of the Kaiser, but on the sidewalks men were muttering beneath their breath: "They'll not pass here on their return. The Allies will do for them."

Many of the younger men in the great array seemed exhausted after the long forced march, but as a man staggered his comrades in the ranks held him up.

It was a great spectacle and an impressive one, but there were minor incidents that were of a less pleasant character.

Two Belgian officers, manacled and fastened to the leather stirrups of two Uhlans, made a spectacle that caused a low murmur of resentment from the citizens. Instantly German horsemen backed their steeds into the closely packed ranks of the spectators, threatening them with uplifted swords and stilling the momentary revolt.

At one point of the march a lame hawker offered flowers for sale to the soldiers. As he held up his posies a Captain of Hussars by a movement of his steed sent the poor wretch sprawling and bleeding in the dust. Then from the crowd a Frenchwoman, her heart scorning fear, cried out, "You brute!" so that all might hear.

There was one gross pleasantry, too, perpetrated by a gunner who led along a bear, evidently the pet of his battery, which was dressed in the full regalia of a Belgian General.

The bear was evidently intended to represent the King. He touched his cocked hat at intervals to his keeper.

This particularly irritated the Belgians, but they wisely abstained from any overt manifestation or any unpleasant feature of behavior. The soldiery as they passed tore repeatedly at the national colors which every Belgian lady now wears on her breast.

A more pleasant incident was when a party of Uhlans clamored for admittance at a villa on the Louvain road. They disposed of a dozen bottles of wine and bread and meat. The non-commissioned officer in command asked what the charge was and offered some gold pieces in payment. The money was refused.

Near the steps of St. Gudule a party of officers of high rank, seated in a motor car, confiscated the stock of the news vendors. After greedily scanning the sheets they burst into loud laughter.

Hour after hour, hour after hour, the Kaiser's legions marched into Brussels streets and boulevards. Some regiments made a very fine appearance, and it is well that the people of England should know this. It was notably so in the case of the Sixty-sixth, Fourth and Twenty-sixth Regiments. Not one man of these regiments showed any sign of excessive fatigue after the gruelling night of marching, and no doubt the order to "goose step" was designedly given to impress the onlookers with the powers of resistance of the German soldiers.



The railway stations, the Post Office and the Town Hall were at once closed. The national flag on the latter was pulled down and the German emblem hoisted in its place. Practically all the shops were closed and the blinds drawn on most of the windows.

At the time of writing I have heard of no very untoward incident. The last train left Brussels at 9 o'clock on Wednesday night. Passengers to the city cannot pass beyond Denderleeuw, where there are strong German pickets.



*The Fall of Antwerp*

*By a Correspondent of The London Daily Chronicle, Who Was at Antwerp During the Siege.*

[Special Dispatch to THE NEW YORK TIMES.]

LONDON, Oct. 11.—A Daily Chronicle correspondent who has just arrived from Antwerp tells the following story of his experiences:

Antwerp has been surrendered. This last and bitterest blow which has fallen upon Belgium is full of poignant tragedy, but the tragedy is lightened by the gallantry with which the city was defended.

Only at the last, to save the historic buildings and precious possessions of the ancient port, was its further defense abandoned. Already much of it had been shattered by the long-range German guns, and prolonged resistance against these tremendous engines of war was impossible.

Owing to this the siege was perhaps the shortest in the annals of war that a fortified city ever sustained. I have already described its preliminaries and the many heroic efforts which were made by the Belgians to stem the tide of the enemy's advance, but the end could not long be delayed when the siege guns began the bombardment.

It was at three minutes past noon on Friday that the Germans entered the city, which was formally surrendered by the Burgomaster, J. de Vos. Antwerp had then been under a devastating and continuous shell fire for over forty hours.

It was difficult for me to ascertain precisely how the German attack was being constituted, but from officers and others who made journeys from the fighting lines into the city I gathered that the final assault consisted of a continuous bombardment of two hours' duration, from 7:30 o'clock in the morning until 9:30.

During that time there was a continuous rain of shells, and it was extraordinary to notice the precision with which they dropped just where they would do the most damage. I was told that the Germans used captive balloons, whose officers signaled to the gunners the points in the Belgian defense at which they should aim.

The German guns, too, were concealed with such cleverness that their position could not be detected by the Belgians. Against such methods and against the terrible power of the German guns the Belgian artillery seemed quite ineffective. The firing came to an end at 9:30 o'clock Friday, and the garrison escaped, leaving only ruins behind them.



In order to gain time for an orderly retreat, a heavy fire was maintained against the Germans up to the last minute, and the forts were then blown up by the defenders as the Germans came in at the Gate of Malines. I was lucky enough to escape by the river to the north in a motor boat. The bombardment had then ceased, though many buildings were still blazing, and while the little boat sped down the Scheldt one could imagine the procession of the Kaiser's troops already goose-stepping their way through the well-nigh deserted streets.

Those forty hours of shattering noise, almost without a lull, seem to me now a fantastic nightmare, but the harrowing sights I witnessed in many parts of the city cannot be forgotten. It was Wednesday night that the shells began to fall into the city. From then onward they must have averaged about ten a minute, and most of them came from the largest guns which the Germans possess—"Black Marias," as Tommy Atkins has christened them.

Before the bombardment had been long in operation the civil population or a large proportion of it fell into a panic. It is impossible to blame these peaceful, quiet living burghers of Antwerp for the fears that possessed them when the merciless rain of German shells began to fall into the streets and on the roofs of their houses and public buildings. The Burgomaster had in his proclamation given them excellent advice to remain calm and he certainly set them an admirable example, but it was impossible to counsel the Belgians who knew what had happened to their fellow citizens in other towns which the Germans had passed through.

Immense crowds of them, men, women and children, gathered along the quayside and at the railway stations in an effort to make a hasty exit from the city. Their condition was pitiable in the extreme. Family parties made up the biggest proportion of this vast crowd of broken men and women. There were husbands and wives with their groups of scared children unable to understand what was happening, yet dimly conscious in their childish way that something unusual and terrible and perilous had come into their lives.

In many groups were to be seen old, old people, grandfathers and grandmothers of a family, and these in their shaking frailty and terror, which they could not withstand, were the more pitiable objects in the great gathering of stricken townsfolk. This pathetic clinging together of the family was one of the most affecting sights I witnessed, and I have not the slightest doubt that in the mad rush for refuge beyond the borders of their native land many family groups of this sort completely perished.

All day and throughout the night these pitiful scenes continued, and when I went down to the quayside early Thursday, when the dawn was throwing a wan light over this part of the world, I found again a great host of citizens awaiting their chance of flight.

In the dimness of the breaking day this gathering of "Les Miserables" presented, as it seemed to me, the tragedy of Belgium in all its horror. I shall never forget the sight. Words would fail to convey anything but a feeble picture of the depths of misery and despair there. People stood in dumb and patient ranks drawn down to the quayside by the announcement that two boats would leave at 11 o'clock for Ostend, and Ostend looks across to England, where lie their hopes.

There were fully 40,000 of them assembled on the long quay, and all of them were inspired by the sure and certain hope that they would be among the lucky ones who would get on board one of the boats. Alas for their hopes, the two boats did not sail, and when they realized this I fancied I heard a low wail of anguish rise from the disappointed multitude.

Other means of escape were, however, available in the shape of a dozen or fifteen tugboats, whose destinations were Rotterdam and Flushing and other ports of Holland. They were not vessels of any considerable passenger carrying capacity, and as there was no one to arrange a systematic embarkation a wild struggle followed among the frantic people to obtain places on the tugs. Men, women, and children fought desperately with each other to get on board, and in that moment of supreme anguish human nature was seen in one of its worst moods, but who can blame these stricken people? Shells that were destroying their homes and giving their beloved town to the flames were screaming over their heads. Their trade was not war; they were merchants, shopkeepers, comfortable citizens of more than middle age, and there were many women and children among them, and this horror had come upon them in a more appalling shape than it has visited any other civilized community in modern times.

There was a scarcity of gangways to the boats and the only means of boarding them was by narrow planks sloping at a dangerous angle. Up these the fugitives struggled, and the strong elbowed the weak out of their way in their mad haste to escape. The marvel to me as I watched the scramble was that many were not crushed to death in the struggle to get on board or forced into the river and drowned. As it was, mishaps were very few. One old lady of 80 years slipped on one of the planks and fell against the side of the boat, fracturing her skull. Several people fell into the river and two were drowned, but that is the sum total of accidents as far as I could ascertain.

By 2 o'clock Thursday most of the tugboats had got away, but there were still some 15,000 people who had not been able to escape, and had to await resignedly whatever fate was in store for them.

I have endeavored to describe the scenes at the quayside on Thursday morning, and I now turn to the Central Station, where incidents of a similar kind were happening. There, as down by the river, an immense throng of people had assembled, and they were filled with dismay at the announcement that no trains were running. In their despair they prepared to leave the city on foot by crossing the pontoon bridge and marching toward the Dutch frontier.

I cannot, of course, speak positively on the subject, but I should say the exodus of refugees from the city must have totaled 200,000 persons—men, women, and children of all ages—or very nearly that vast number, and that out of a population which in normal times is 321,821. One might estimate that fully 70 per cent. of those folk had little or no money.

There were three lines of exit. They could up to the time of the German invasion cross the pontoon bridge over the Scheldt; they could go along the countryside toward the Dutch frontier, or they could walk up the Scheldt toward the frontier and then cross by ferry to Belgian territory again.

Many of the aged women among the refugees, terrorized and hunger-stricken, died, I am told, on the way to the Belgian frontier. The towns were crowded with pitiful wanderers, fleeing from the ruthless invaders, and they begged for crusts of bread. They were simply starving, and householders did what they could to help, cottagers giving to their utmost out of their meagre larders, but still there was a cry for food.

I now return to the events of Thursday. At 12:30 o'clock in the afternoon, when the bombardment had already lasted over twelve hours, through the courtesy of a Belgian officer I was able to ascend to the roof of the cathedral, and from that point of vantage I looked down upon the scene in the city.

All the southern portion of Antwerp appeared to be a desolate ruin. Whole streets were ablaze, and flames were rising in the air to the height of twenty and thirty feet. In another direction I could just discern through my glasses dimly in the distance the instruments of culture of the attacking German forces, ruthlessly pounding at the city and creeping nearer to it in the dark. At that moment I should say the enemy's front line was within four miles of Antwerp.

From my elevated position I had an excellent view also of the great oil tanks on the opposite side of the Scheldt. They had been set on fire by four bombs from a German taube, and a huge, thick volume of black smoke was ascending 200 feet into the air. The oil had been burning furiously for several hours, and the whole neighborhood was enveloped in a mist of smoke.

In all directions were fire and flames and oil-laden smoke. It was like a bit of Gustave Dore's idea of the infernal regions. From time to time great tongues of fire shot out from the tanks, and in this way, the flames greedily licking the sides of other tanks, the conflagration spread. How long this particular fire raged I cannot say, for I saw neither the beginning nor the end of it, but while I watched its progress it seemed to represent the limit of what a fire was capable of.

After watching for some considerable time the panorama of destruction that lay unrolled all around me, I came down from my post of observation on the cathedral roof, and at the very moment I reached the street a 28-centimeter shell struck a confectioner's shop between the Place Verte and the Place Meir. It was one of these high explosive shells, and the shop, a wooden structure, immediately burst into flames.

The city by this time was almost deserted, and no attempt was made to extinguish the fires that had broken out all over the southern district. Indeed, there were no means of dealing with them.

As far back as Tuesday in last week the water supply from the reservoir ten miles outside the city was cut off, and as this was the city's main source of supply, indeed practically its only source, great apprehension was felt. The reservoir is just behind Fort Waelhem, and the German shells had struck it, doing great mischief. It left Antwerp without any regular inflow of water, and the inhabitants had to do their best with artesian wells. Great efforts were made by the Belgians from time to time to repair the reservoir, but it was always thwarted by German shell fire. The health of the city was thereby menaced, for there was danger of an epidemic.

Happily, stricken Antwerp was spared this added terror. It had plenty of other sorts, and some of these I experienced when, after leaving the cathedral, I made my way to the southern section of the city, where shells were bursting at the rate of five a minute. With great difficulty and not without risk I got as far as Rue la Moiere.

There I met a terror-stricken Belgian woman, the only other person in the streets besides myself. In hysterical gasps she told me the Banque Nationale and the Palais de Justice had been struck and were in flames, and that her husband had been hit by a shell just five minutes before I came upon the scene, his mangled remains lying not a hundred yards away from where we were standing.

It was obviously impossible to proceed further, and so I retraced my steps toward the quay. As I was passing the Avenue de Keyser a shell burst within twenty yards of me. I was knocked down by the force of the concussion. A house not ten yards from where I was was struck and actually poured (I can think of no other word to describe what happened) into the street in a shower of bricks. A broken brick struck me on the shoulder, but its force was spent and I received no injury.

I had scarcely picked myself up and was hastening to a place of safety, if there were one, when a man about 40 years of age, almost half naked, rushed out of a house, screaming loudly. He had gone mad.

At this time I was fortunate enough to meet Frank Fox of The Morning Post. Mr. Fox is an ex-officer of artillery, and he told me he had found a hotel which, as long as the Germans fired in the direction they were then firing, was not within the reach of their guns. This was the Hotel Wagner, which stands behind the Opera House on the Boulevard de Commerce. It was the only hotel in the city except the Queens Hotel, in which some representatives of American newspapers had been staying, that was open. There I found Miss Louise Mack, an Australian authoress, and she, Fox, and myself were among the few British subjects left in the port.

As night came the city presented a fantastic appearance as I watched it from the Hotel Wagner. The glare from the fires that had burst out in all directions could be seen for miles around. The bombardment was proceeding furiously, and German shells were bursting in every direction. I reckoned they were coming in that time at the rate of at least thirty a minute.

I went to the Queens Hotel to ascertain what had become of the American journalists. I found they had left the city after having spent the night in a private house which had been struck three times by shells, and finally caught fire. Arthur Ruhl of the staff of Collier's Weekly had left for me this note:

Donald C. Thompson, photographer of The New York World, fitted up for himself a cellar at 74 Rue de Peage, just by the Boulevard de Keyser, where shrapnel fell with terrible force during the latter part of Wednesday. With him were three other Americans. The entire population, including, of course, the Government of Antwerp, have made their escape across the pontoon bridge which still connects the River Scheldt with the road toward Ghent. Two shells demolished Thompson's retreat and at sundown it burst into flames. The American Consul General and Vice Consul General had gone by this time. The following Americans, all of them newspaper men, were known to have spent the night in Antwerp; Arthur Ruhl, Horace Green, staff of The New York Evening Post; Edward Eyre Hunt, correspondent of The New York World; Edward Heigel of the staff of The Chicago Daily Tribune, and Thompson himself.

Except for the glare of burning buildings, which lit up the streets, the city was in absolute darkness, and near the quay I lost my way in the byroads trying to get back to the Hotel Wagner. For the second time that day I narrowly escaped death by a shell. One burst with terrific force about twenty-five yards from me. I heard its warning whirr, and rushed into a neighboring porch. Whether it was from concussion of the shell or in my anxiety to escape, I cannoned against a door and tumbled down. As I lay on the ground the house on the opposite side crashed in ruins. I remained still for several minutes feeling quite sick and unable to get up. Then I pulled myself together, and ran at full speed until I came to a street which I recognized, and found my way back to the hotel.

As I hastened down the Avenue de Keyser shells were bursting in every quarter. Several fell into the adjoining street. At the hotel I found my friend Fox had been up to the Red Cross Hospital to inquire about a motor car in which we hoped to get away. It had gone, as had the entire personnel of the hospital.

We began to wonder how we should escape. However, Fox had a bicycle, and Mr. Singleton, Chief of the Boy Scouts in Antwerp, had given me the key of a house not far off, in which he told me there was one if I wanted it in an emergency. I ventured into that dangerous part of the city again to get it. I got to the house safely and found the bicycle, but as there was no tube in the back tire it was useless. On my return journey I was startled to see in the street through which I had just walked a hole six feet deep, which had just been made by a shell.

On returning to the hotel I joined in a meal, eaten under the weirdest [Transcriber: original 'wierdest'] conditions imaginable. Descending into the cellars of the hotel with Miss Mack and Mr. Fox we found the entire staff gathered there uncertain what to do and not knowing what was to happen to them. We were all hungry, and one of the men dashed upstairs to the kitchen and brought down whatever food he could lay his hands on, and we all partook of pot luck. Considering all the circumstances we made a very jolly meal of it. We toasted each other in good red wine of the country, pledging each other with "Vive la Belgique" and "Vive l'Angleterre," and altogether we were a merry party, although at the time German shells were whirling overhead and any moment one might have upset our picnic and buried us in the debris of the hotel.

How many of the inhabitants of Antwerp remained in the city that night it is impossible to say, but it is pretty certain they were all in the cellars of their houses or shops.

The admirable Burgomaster, M. De Vos, had in one of his several proclamations made many suggestions for safety during the bombardment for the benefit of those who took refuge in cellars. Among the most useful of them perhaps was that which recommended means of escape to adjoining cellars. The power of modern artillery is so tremendous that a cellar might very well become a tomb if shells were to fall on the building overhead.

We went to bed early that night but sleep was impossible in the noise caused by the explosion of the shells in twenty different quarters of the town. About 3 o'clock in the morning a twenty-eight centimeter shell fell into the square in front of the hotel and broke all the windows in the neighboring house. In spite of the terrific din one got to sleep at last.

About 6 o'clock Fox roused me and said he thought it was time we got out, as the Germans were entering the city. We hurried from the hotel, and found in the square a squad of Belgian soldiers who had just come in from the inner line of forts. They told us it was not safe for us to remain any longer. The streets were now completely deserted.

I walked down to the quayside, and there I came across many wounded soldiers, who had been unable to get away in the hospital boat. On the quay piles of equipment had been abandoned; broken-down motor cars, kit-bags, helmets, rifles, knapsacks were littered in heaps. Ammunition had been dumped there and rendered useless. The Belgians had evidently attempted to set fire to the whole lot. A pile of stuff was still smoldering. I waited there for half an hour, and during that time hundreds of Belgian soldiers passed in retreat, the last contingent leaving at about 6:30 A.M.

I went again to the Queen's Hotel to inquire what had become of the American newspaper men, and it was just about this time that the pontoon bridge which had been the way of the Belgian retreat was blown up to prevent pursuit by the Germans. The boats and woodwork of the superstructure burnt fiercely and in less than twenty minutes the whole affair was demolished.

Safe exit from the city was now cut off. A Red Cross officer whom I met when standing by the quay had been a spectator of the blowing up of the bridge.

"My God!" he said, running toward me, "it is awful!"

"How are you going to get out?" I asked him.

"I'm going to stay here and look after my wounded," he replied.

In further talk with him I learned that the greater part of the second line of forts had fallen at midday the previous day and that there was nothing then to stop the Germans entering the city save a handful of Belgian soldiers in three or four forts. At 8 o'clock a shell struck the Town Hall.

Fox had now joined me, and we took refuge in the cellars beneath the Town Hall. So far as I could gather, the remaining inhabitants of Antwerp must have assembled about this neighborhood, groups taking refuge in small and stuffy cellars, where developments were anxiously awaited. There must have been hundreds of people sheltered underground, and they included the Mexican and Dominican Consuls. Why these stayed I do not know, as none of their people were left behind. They were the only Consuls remaining in Antwerp.

About 8:15 o'clock another shell struck the Town Hall, shattering the upper story and breaking every window in the place. That was the German way of telling the Burgomaster to hurry up. There was a tense feeling as we waited for tidings of some sort or other. A quarter of an hour later M. De Vos went out in his motor car toward the German line to discuss conditions on which the city should be surrendered.

Another shell struck a furrier's shop opposite the Town Hall and the place burst into flames. Several of the gendarmes who had stayed behind were occupants of cellars, and two of them immediately rushed out to force a way into the shop in order that they might extinguish the fire. They found the door locked. It took them ten minutes to force an entrance. By this time the fire was burning fiercely, and at great personal risk one of the gendarmes made his way to the top floor of the premises, and there he endeavored to beat out the flames with a piece of timber torn from the roof. His efforts were futile, and he called for water. Soon a Flemish woman brought him two pailfuls, which Fox had carried to the house, and after half an hour's labor the fire was extinguished.

The proprietor of the shop was among the people in the cellars across the way. The news that his house was aflame was broken to him and he rushed into the street. He gazed for a moment on the scene and burst into tears like a child.

At 9 o'clock the bombardment of the city suddenly ceased and we understood the Burgomaster had by this time reached German headquarters. Still we waited, painfully anxious to learn what would be the ultimate fate of Antwerp. The Belgian soldiers hurried by on their way to the front. A number paused just as they reached a tobacconist's shop which had been wrecked by shells, scattering the stock in the street. There were cigars hurled across the pavement and roadway, and soldiers who had halted picked up a few of the cigars. A Belgian workman, taking advantage of this, entered the shop and began to stuff his pockets full of cigars and cigarettes, but immediately gendarmes hurried to the place and arrested him, the last arrest the Antwerp police will make for some time.

At 10:30 o'clock proclamations were posted on walls of the Town Hall urging all in the city to surrender any arms in their possession and begging for a calm demeanor in the event of German occupation. The list was also posted of several prominent citizens who were appointed to look after the interests of those Belgians who remained.

Just before noon a patrol of cyclists and armed and mounted gendarmes, who had escorted the Burgomaster to the gate of the city, informed Fox and myself that the Germans were entering by the gate of Malines. We hastily took our bicycles with the intention of making our way over the Dutch frontier. As we passed along the quay by a most timely stroke of luck we found a motor boat standing by. It was manned by a Belgian, and his mate.

"Can you take us to Flushing?" we asked.

"Yes," answered the Belgian.

"How much?"

"One hundred and fifty francs each."

We were in that boat in thirty seconds and in another thirty seconds had started down the Scheldt. By this time the Germans were in the city.

At a good ten knots we raced down the river. In twenty-five minutes we had reached the bend which blotted Antwerp from view. As we rounded the corner I turned for a last glimpse of the disappearing city. The Cathedral was still standing, its tower dominating surroundings. Here and there volumes of smoke were rising to the sky.

It took us twelve hours to get to Flushing. On either side of the river thousands of refugees were fleeing from the invaders. They swarmed along the banks in continuous lines, a vast pilgrimage of the hopeless, many laden with household possessions which they had been able to gather at almost a moment's notice. Numbers were empty-handed and burdened at that in dragging their weary bodies along the miles which seemed never ending. It was a heartrending spectacle. Infinite pity must go out to those broken victims of the war, bowed veterans driven from home, going they knew not where; women with their crying children, famished for lack of food, all or nearly all leaving behind men folk who were still fighting their country's battle or mourning the loss of loved ones who had already sacrificed their lives.

Where the Scheldt becomes Dutch property we were stopped by customs authorities and submitted to a rigorous examination. Dutch officials for a time believed we were either Belgian or English officers escaping, but eventually they were satisfied.

Upon arriving at Flushing we found the town in a tremendous state of excitement. Great crowds of refugees were there, 10,000 or more, and the hotels were choked. Many wretched people had left their homes absolutely without any money and were forced to camp in the streets. There was a vast crowd waiting to get on the Flushing-Folkestone boat, and it appeared we would be balked in our endeavor to get to England that night. However, we discussed our position with the Superintendent of the line, and he very kindly got us a berth.



*As the French Fell Back on Paris*

*By G.H. Perris of The London Daily Chronicle.*

[Special Dispatch to THE NEW YORK TIMES.]

CHATEAU [Transcriber: original 'Chateau'] THIERRY, Sunday, Sept. 13.—We first realized yesterday, in a little town of Brie which lies east of Paris, between the Seine and the Marne, how difficult it is to get food in the rear of two successive invasions. As in every other town in the region, all the shops were shut and nearly all the houses. It was only after a long search that we found an inn that could give us luncheon.

There, in a large room with a low-beamed roof and a tiled floor, our stout landlady in blue cotton produced an excellent meal of melon, mutton, macaroni, and good ripe pears. Dogs and cats sprawled around us, and a big bowl of roses spoke of serenities that are now in general eclipse. At a neighboring table a group of peasants, too old for active service, were discussing their grievances.

At a railway crossing just out of town we were blocked by a train of about a dozen big horse trucks and two passenger carriages, carrying wounded and prisoners to Paris from the fighting lines in the north. It had been a gloomy morning, and the rain now fell in torrents. Nevertheless the townsfolk crowded up, and for half an hour managed to conduct a satisfactory combination of profit and pity by supplying big flat loaves, bottles of wine, fruit, cigarettes, and jugs of water to those in the train who had money and some who had none. One very old woman in white, with a little red cross on her forehead, turned up to take advantage of the only opportunity ever likely to fall in her way. A great Turco in fez, blouse, and short, baggy breeches was very active in this commissariat work.

Some of the Frenchmen on board were not wounded seriously enough to prevent their getting down on the roadway; and you may be sure they were not ashamed of their plaster patches and bandaged arms.

There were about 300 German prisoners in the train. We got glimpses of them lying in the straw on the floor in the dark interior of the big trucks. I got on the footboard and looked into the open door of one car. Fifteen men were stretched upon straw, and two soldiers stood guard over them, rifle in hand. They all seemed in a state of extreme exhaustion. Some were asleep, others were eating large chunks of bread.

In the middle of the car a young soldier who spoke French fairly well told me that the German losses during the last three days had been enormous; and then, stopping suddenly, he said:

"Would it be possible, Sir, to get a little water for my fellows and myself?"

"Certainly," I replied; and a man belonging to the station, who was passing with a jug, said at once that he would run and get some. The prisoner thanked me and added with a sigh:

"They are very good fellows here."

One jocular French guard had put on a spiked helmet which he was keeping as a trophy, and, so much does the habit make the man, he now looked uncannily like a German himself.

As we passed through the villages to the northeast the contrast between abandoned houses and gardens rioting with the color of roses and dahlias and fruit-laden trees struck us like a blow.

In Gourchamp a number of houses had been burned, and the neighboring fields showed that there had been fighting there; but it was Courtacon which presented the most grievous spectacle. Eighteen of its two dozen houses had been completely destroyed by fire. The walls were partly standing, but the floors and contents of the rooms were completely buried under the debris of roofs that had fallen in. In a little Post Office the telegraphic and telephonic instruments had been smashed. Just opposite is a small building including the office of the Mayor and the village school. The outside of the building and the outhouses were littered with the straw on which the Uhlans had slept. In the Mayor's office the drawers and cupboards had been broken open, and their contents had been scattered with the remnants of meals on the floor.

But it is a scene in a little village school that will longest remain in my memory. The low forms, the master's desk, and the blackboard stand today as they did on July 25, which was no doubt the last day before the Summer vacation, as it was also the last week before the outbreak of the war. On the walls the charts remained which reminded these little ones daily that "Alcohol is the enemy," and had summoned them to follow the path of kindness, justice, and truth. The windows were smashed, broken cartridge cases lay about with wings of birds and other refuse. Near the door I saw chalked up, evidently in German handwriting, "Parti Paris," ("Left for Paris.")

The invaders had sought to burn the place. There was one pile of partly burned straw under the school bookcase, the doors of which had been smashed, while some of the books had been thrown about. They had not even respected a little museum consisting of a few bottles of metal and chemical specimens; and when I turned to leave I perceived written across the blackboard in bold, fine writing, as the lesson of the day, these words: "A chaque jour suffit sa peine," ("Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.")

One of the villagers gave us the following narrative of the experiences of the past week:

"It was last Saturday, Sept. 5, that about 15,000 Uhlans arrived in the village with the intention of marching on Provins on the morrow. They probably learned during the night that the British and French lay in force across their road, and perhaps they may now have received orders to fall back.

"At any rate, early Sunday morning they started to retire, when they met at the entrance to the village a regiment of chasseurs. This was the beginning of fighting which lasted all day. Under the pretext that we had learned of the presence of the French troops and had helped them to prepare a trap, the Germans sacked the whole of the village.

"Naturally there was a panic. All the inhabitants—mostly women and children, because since the mobilization there have been only nine men in Courtacon—rushed from their cottages and many of them, lightly clad, fled across the fields and hid themselves in the neighboring woods.

"In several cottages Germans, revolvers in hand, compelled the poor peasants to bring matches and themselves set fire to their homes. In less than an hour the village was like a furnace, the walls toppling down one by one. And all this time the fighting continued. It was a horrible spectacle.

"Several of us were dragged to the edge of the road to be shot, and there we remained for some hours, believing our last day had come. A young village lad of 21 years, who was just going to leave to join the colors, was shot. Then the retreat was sounded, the Germans fled precipitately, and we were saved."

I asked whether the cottages had not been fired by artillery.

"Not a cannon shot fell here," he replied. "All that"—pointing to the ruined huts—"was done by incendiaries." And then he added:

"Last Tuesday two French officers came in automobiles and brought with them a superior German officer whom they had made prisoner. They compelled him to become a witness of the mischief of which his fellow-countrymen had been guilty."

A peasant woman passed, pushing a wheelbarrow containing some half-burned household goods and followed by her two small children.

"Look," she said, "at the brutality of these Germans! My husband has gone to war and I am alone with my two little ones. With great difficulty we had managed to gather our crop, and they set fire to our little farm and burned everything."

Half an hour later we were at La Ferte Gaucher, a small town on the Grand Morin, now first made famous by the fact that it was here that the German flight began after the severe fighting last Monday. The invaders had arrived only on Saturday and had the disagreeable surprise of finding that the river bridges had been broken down by the retreating French. The German commandant informed the municipal officials that if the sum of 60,000 francs ($12,000) was not produced he would burn the town. Then he compelled the people to set about rebuilding the bridge, and they worked day and night at this job under the eyes of soldiers with revolvers and rifles ready to shoot down any shirker.

The relief of these people at the return of the Allies may be imagined. Here, as elsewhere, some houses were burned, but otherwise the damage did not appear to be very serious.



*The Retreat to Paris*

*By Philip Gibbs of The London Daily Chronicle.*

[Special Dispatch to THE NEW YORK TIMES.]

NEAR AMIENS, Aug. 30.—Looking back on all I have seen during the last few days, I find it difficult to piece together the various incidents and impressions and to make one picture. It all seems to me now like a jigsaw puzzle of suffering and fear and courage and death—a litter of odd, disconnected scraps of human agony and of some big, grim scheme which, if one could only get the clue, would give a meaning, I suppose, to all these tears of women and children, to all these hurried movements of soldiers and people, to the death carts trailing back from unknown places, and to the great dark fear that has enveloped all the tract of country in Northwest France through which I have been traveling, driven like one of its victims from place to place. Out of all this welter of individual suffering and from all the fog of mystery which has enshrouded them until now, when the truth may be told, certain big facts with a clear and simple issue will emerge and give one courage.

The French Army and our English troops are now holding good positions in a much stronger and closer line and stemming the tide of the German hordes rolling up to Paris. Gen. Pau, the hero of this war, after his swift return from the eastern front, where he repaired the deadly check at Muelhausen, has dealt a smashing blow at a German Army corps which was striking to the heart of France.

Paris is still safe for the time being, with a great army of allied forces, French, English, and Belgians, drawn across the country as a barrier which surely will not be broken by the enemy. Nothing that has happened gives cause for that despair which has taken hold of people whose fears have exaggerated the facts, frightful enough when taken separately, but not giving any proof that resistance is impossible against the amazing onslaught of the German legions.

I have been into the war zone and seen during the last five days men who are now holding the lines of defense. I have been among their dead and wounded, and have talked with soldiers marching fresh to the front. I have seen the horrid mess which is cleared up after the battle and the grim picture of retreat, but nothing that I have seen or heard from either British or French leads me to believe that our army has been smashed or the Allies demoralized.

It is impossible to estimate our own losses. Our wounded are being brought back into Havre and Rouen, and undoubtedly there are large numbers of them. But, putting them at the highest, it is clear to me, from all information gained during the last five days, that there has been no overwhelming disaster, and that in the terrible actions fought on the four days from the 23d to the 27th, and afterward in the further retirement from the line of Cambrai and Le Cateau, swinging southward and eastward upon St. Quentin, our main forces, which were pressed by enormous numbers of the enemy, succeeded in withdrawing in good order, without having their lines broken, while inflicting a terrific punishment upon the German right.

As I shall show in this narrative, retreats which seem fatal when seen close at hand and when described by those who belong to broken fragments of extended sections, are not altogether disastrous in their effect when viewed in their right perspective, away from the immediate misery which is their inevitable accompaniment.

German audacity of attack against the heroic courage of the French and British forces, who fight every mile of ground during their retirement, is leading the enemy into a position from which there will be no retreat if their lines are broken. Unfortunately, there are hundreds of thousands of people who know nothing of the great issues and who are possessed by the great, blind fear which has driven them from their towns, villages, and homes.

When the Germans swept around Lille they found, to their amazement, that this town, surrounded by forts, had been abandoned, and they had only to walk inside. This easy access to a town which should have been defended to the last gasp opened the way to the west of France.

The left wing of the French, which was to the west of Mons, was supported by the English troops, all too weak to sustain the pressure of the tremendous odds which began to surge against them; and, realizing this perilous state of affairs, the brain at the centre of things, the controlling brain of Gen. Joffre and his Headquarters Staff, decreed that the northwest corner of France was untenable and that the main army of defense should withdraw into a stronger and closer formation.

It was then that the great panic began, increasing in speed and terror during the end of last week. I was in the midst of it and saw unforgettable scenes of the enormous tragedy. It was a flight of hundreds and thousands of families from St. Omer and Roubaix, Bethune, Douai, Valenciennes, and Arras, who were driven away from their northern homes by the menace of approaching Uhlans. They are still being hunted by fear from place to place, where they can find no shelter and no permanent safety. The railways have been choked with them, and in these long fugitive trains which pass through stations there is no food or drink. The poor runaways, weary, filthy, and exhausted, spend long days and nights shunted onto side lines, while troop trains pass and pass, and are held up in towns where they can find no means of existence because the last civilian train has left.

When the troops marched away from Boulogne and left it silent and unguarded I saw the inhabitants, utterly dismayed, standing despondently staring at placards posted up by order of the Governor, which announced the evacuation of the town and called upon them to be ready for all sacrifices in the service of their country. The customs officers left, the civil police disarmed, while a flag with nine black spots was made ready to be hoisted on the fort directly any Uhlans were sighted.

The people of Boulogne could not understand, no Frenchman of the north can understand, why their ports and towns are silent after the tramp of so many regiments who have left a great tract of country open and undefended. In that corner of France the people listen intently for the first clatter of hoofs and for the first cry "Les Uhlans." Rumors came that the enemy has been seen in neighboring towns and villages. Can one wonder that mothers and fathers rush from their houses and wander forth in a blind, unreasoning way to swell the panic tide of fugitives, homeless and without food, dropping here and there on the wayside in utter weariness?

I was lucky in getting out of Boulogne on the last train bound for Paris, though not guaranteed to reach the capital. As a matter of fact, I was even more lucky because it did not arrive at its destination and enabled me to alight in the war zone and proceed to more interesting places.

I will tell at once the story of the French retirement when the Germans advanced from Namur down the valley of the Meuse, winning the way at a cost of human life as great as that of defeat, yet winning their way. For France the story of that retirement is as glorious as anything in her history. It was nearly a fortnight ago that the Germans concentrated their heaviest forces upon Namur and began to press southward and over the Meuse Valley. After the battle of Dinant the French Army, among whom were the Second and Seventh Corps, was heavily outnumbered and had to fall back gradually, in order to gain time for reinforcements to come up.

French artillery was up on the wooded heights above the river and swept the German regiments with a storm of fire as they advanced. On the right bank the French infantry was intrenched, supported by field guns and mitrailleuses, and did deadly work before leaping from trenches which they occupied and taking up a position in new trenches further back, which they held with great tenacity.

In justice to the Germans it must be said they were heroic in courage and reckless of their lives, and the valley of the Meuse was choked with their corpses. The river itself was strewn with the dead bodies of men and horses and literally ran red with blood.

The most tremendous fighting took place for the possession of the bridges, but the French engineers blew them up one after another as they retired southward.

No less than thirty-three bridges were destroyed in this way before they could be seized by the German advance guard. The fighting was extended for a considerable distance on either side of the Meuse and many engagements took place between French and German cavalry and regiments working away from the main armies.

There was, for instance, a memorable encounter at Marville which is one of the most heroic episodes of the war. Five thousand French soldiers of all arms, with quick-firers, engaged 20,000 German infantry. In spite of being outnumbered, the French beat back the enemy from point to point in a fight lasting for twelve hours, inflicting tremendous punishment and suffering very few losses.

The German officer captured expressed his unbounded admiration for the valor of the French troops, which he described as superb. It was only for fear of getting too far out of touch with the main forces that the gallant 5,000 desisted from their irresistible attack and retired with a large number of German helmets as trophies of the victorious action.

Nevertheless, in accordance with the general plan which had been decided on by the Generals, in view of the superior numbers temporarily pressing upon them, the Germans succeeded in forcing their way steadily down the Meuse as far as Mezieres, divided by a bridge from Charleville, on the other side of the river. This is in the neighborhood of Sedan and in the "trou," as it is called, which led to the great disaster of 1870, when the French were caught in a trap and threatened with annihilation by the Germans, who had taken possession of the surrounding heights.

There was to be no repetition of that tragedy. The French were determined that this time the position should be reversed.

On Monday the town of Charleville was evacuated, most of its civilians being sent away to join the wanderers who have had to leave their homes, and the French troops took up a magnificent position, commanding the town and the three bridges dividing them from Mezieres. Mitrailleuses were hidden in the abandoned houses, and as a disagreeable shock to any German who might escape their fire was a number of the enemy's guns, no fewer than ninety-five of them, which had been captured and disabled by French troops in a series of battles down the river from Namur.

The German outposts reached Charleville on Tuesday. They were allowed to ride quietly across the bridges into an apparently deserted town. Then suddenly their line of retreat was cut off, the three bridges were blown up by a contact mine, and the mitrailleuses hidden in the houses were played on the German cavalry across the streets, killing them in a frightful slaughter.

It was for a little while sheer massacre, but the Germans fought with extraordinary tenacity, regardless of the heaped bodies of comrades and utterly reckless of their own lives. They, too, had brought quick-firers across the bridges, and, taking cover behind houses, trained their guns upon the houses from which the French gunners were firing. There was no way of escape for those heroic men, who voluntarily sacrificed themselves, and it is probable every man died, because at such a time the Germans were not in the habit of giving quarter.

When the main German advance came down the valley, the French artillery on the heights raked them with a terrific fire, in which they suffered heavy losses, the forefront of the column being mowed down. But under this storm they proceeded with incredible coolness to their pontoon bridges across the river, and although hundreds of men died on the banks, they succeeded in their endeavor, while their guns searched the hills with shells and forced French gunners to retire from their positions.

The occupation of Charleville was a German victory, but was also a German graveyard. After this historic episode in what has been an unending battle the main body of French withdrew before the Germans, who were now pouring down the valley, and retired to new ground.

It was a retirement which has had one advantage in spite of its acknowledgment of the enemy's amazing pertinacity. It has enabled the allied armies to draw closer together, its firm front sweeping around in a crescent from Abbeville, around south of Amiens, and thence in an irregular line to the eastern frontier.

On the map it is at first sight a rather unhappy thing to see that practically the whole of France north of Amiens lies open to German descent from Belgium. To break up the German Army piecemeal and lure it to its own destruction it was almost necessary to manoeuvre it into precisely the position which it now occupies. The success of Gen. Pau shows that the allied army is taking the offensive again, and that as a great fighting machine it is still powerful and menacing.

I must again emphasize the difficulty of grasping the significance of a great campaign by isolated incidents, and the danger of drawing important deductions from the misfortunes in one part of the field. I do so because I have been tempted again and again during the past few days to fall into similar mistakes. Perhaps in my case it was pardonable.

It is impossible for the armchair reader to realize the psychological effect of being mixed up in the panic of a great people and the retreat from a battlefield.

The last real fighting was taking place at a village called Bapaume all day Friday. It was very heavy fighting here on the left centre of the great army commanded by Gen. Pau, and leading to a victory which has just been announced officially in France.

A few minutes before midnight Friday, when they came back along the road to Amiens, crawling back slowly in a long, dismal trail, the ambulance wagons laden with the dead and dying, hay carts piled high with saddles and accoutrements, upon which lay, immobile like men already dead, the spent and exhausted soldiers, they passed through the crowds of silent people of Amiens, who only whispered as they stared at the procession. In the darkness a cuirassier, with head bent upon his chest, stumbled forward, leading his horse, too weak and tired to bear him.

Many other men were leading poor beasts this way, and infantry soldiers, some with bandaged heads, clung to the backs of carts and wagons, and seemed asleep as they shuffled by.

The light from roadside lamps gleamed upon blanched faces and glazed eyes, flashed into caverns of canvas-covered carts, where twisted men lay huddled on straw. Not a groan came from the carts, but every one knew it was a retreat.

The carts carrying the quick and the dead rumbled by in a long convoy, the drooping heads of the soldiers turned neither right nor left for any greeting with friends.

There was a hugger-mugger of uniforms, of provision carts, and with ambulances—it was a part of the wreckage and wastage of war; and to the onlookers, with the exaggeration, unconsciously, of the importance of the things close at hand and visible, it seemed terrible in its significance and an ominous reminder of 1870.

Really this was an inevitable part of a serious battle, not necessarily a retreat from a great disaster.

But more pitiful even than this drift back were scenes which followed. As I turned back into the town I saw thousands of boys who had been called to the colors and had been brought up from the country to be sent forward to second lines of defense.

They were the reservists of the 1914 class, and many of them were shouting and singing, though here and there a white-faced boy tried to hide his tears as women from the crowd ran forward to embrace him. These lads were keeping up their valor by noisy demonstrations; but, having seen the death carts pass, I could not bear to look into the faces of those little ones who are following their fathers to the guns.

Early next morning there was a thrill of anxiety in Amiens. Reports had come through that the railway line had been cut between Boulogne and Abbeville. There had been mysterious movements of regiments from the town barracks. They had moved out of Amiens, and there was a strange quietude in the streets. Hardly a man in uniform was to be seen in the places which had been filled with soldiers the day before.

Only a few people realized the actual significance of this. How could they know that it was a part of the great plan to secure the safety of France? How could they realize that the town itself would be saved from possible bombardment by this withdrawal of the troops to positions which would draw the Germans into the open?

The fighting on the Cambrai-Cateau line seems to have been more desperate even that the terrible actions at Mons and Charleroi. It was when the British troops had to swing around to a more southerly line to guard the roads to Paris, that the enemy attacked in prodigious numbers, and their immense superiority in machine guns did terrible work among officers and men.

But on all sides, from the French officers, there is immense praise for the magnificent conduct of our troops, and in spite of all alarmist statements I am convinced from what I have heard that they have retired intact, keeping their lines together, and preventing their divisions from being broken and cut off.

The list of casualties must be very great, but if I can believe the evidence of my own eyes in such towns as Rouen, where the Red Cross hospitals are concentrated, they are not heavy enough to suggest anything like a great and irretrievable disaster.

DIEPPE, Sept. 3.—Let me describe briefly the facts which I have learned of in the last five days. When I escaped from Amiens, before the tunnel was broken up, and the Germans entered into possession of the town on Aug. 28, the front of the allied armies was in a crescent from Abbeville, south of Amiens on the wooded heights, and thence in an irregular line to south of Mezieres. The British forces, under Sir John French, were at the left of the centre, supporting the heavy thrust-forward of the main German advance, while the right was commanded by Gen. Pau.

On Sunday afternoon fighting was resumed along the whole line. The German vanguard had by this time been supported by a fresh army corps, which had been brought from Belgium. At least 1,000,000 men were on the move, pressing upon the allied forces with a ferocity of attack which has never before been equaled. Their cavalry swept across a great tract of country, squadron by squadron, like the mounted hordes of Attila, but armed with the dreadful weapons of modern warfare. Their artillery was in enormous numbers, and their columns advanced under cover of it, not like an army, but rather like a moving nation—I do not think, however, with equal pressure at all parts of the line. It formed itself into a battering ram with a pointed end, and this point was thrust at the heart of the English wing.

It was impossible to resist this onslaught. If the British forces had stood against it they would have been crushed and broken. Our gunners were magnificent, and shelled the advancing German columns so that the dead lay heaped up along the way which was leading down to Paris; but as one of them told me: "It made no manner of difference; as soon as we had smashed one lot another followed, column after column, and by sheer weight of numbers we could do nothing to check them."

After this the British forces fell back, fighting all the time. The line of the Allies was now in the shape of a V, the Germans thrusting their main attack deep into the angle.

This position remained the same until Monday, or, rather, had completed itself by that date, the retirement of the troops being maintained with masterly skill and without any undue haste.

Meanwhile Gen. Pau was sustaining a terrific attack on the French centre by the German left centre, which culminated on (date omitted). The River Oise, which runs between beautiful meadows, was choked with corpses and red with blood.

From an eyewitness of this great battle, an officer of an infantry regiment, who escaped with a slight wound, I learned that the German onslaught had been repelled by a series of brilliant bayonet and cavalry charges.

"The Germans," he said, "had the elite of their army engaged against us, including the Tenth Army Corps and the Imperial Guard, but the heroism of our troops was sublime. Every man knew that the safety of France depended upon him and was ready to sacrifice his life, if need be, with joyful enthusiasm. They not only resisted the enemy's attack but took the offensive, and, in spite of their overpowering numbers, gave them tremendous punishment. They had to recoil before our guns, which swept their ranks, and their columns were broken and routed.

"Hundreds of them were bayoneted, and hundreds were hurled into the river. The whole field of battle was outlined by dead and dying men whom they had to abandon. Certainly their losses were enormous, and I felt that the German retreat was in full swing and that we could claim a real victory for the time being."

Nevertheless the inevitable happened, owing to the vast reserves of the enemy, who brought up four divisions, and Gen. Pau was compelled to give ground.

On Tuesday German skirmishers with light artillery were coming southward, and the sound of their field guns greeted my ears in that town which I shall always remember with unpleasant recollections in spite of its Old World beauty and the loveliness of the scene in which it is set. It seemed to me that this was the right place to be in order to get into touch with the French Army on the way to the capital. As a matter of fact, it was the wrong place from all points of view; it was nothing less than a deathtrap, and it was by a thousand-to-one chance that I succeeded in escaping quite a nasty kind of fate.

I might have suspected that something was wrong with the place by the strange look on the face of a friendly French peasant, whom I met. He had described to me in a very vivid way the disposition of the French troops on the neighboring hills. Down the road came suddenly parties of peasants with fear in their eyes. Some of them were in farm carts and put their horses to a stumbling gallop.

Women with blanched faces, carrying children in their arms, trudged along the dusty highway, and it was clear that these people were afraid of something behind them. There were not many of them, and when they had passed the countryside was strangely and uncannily quiet. There was only the sound of singing birds above fields which were flooded with the golden light of the setting sun.

Then I came into the town. An intense silence brooded there among the narrow little streets below the old Norman church—a white jewel on the rising ground beyond. Almost every house was shuttered with blind eyes; but here and there I looked through an open window into deserted rooms. No human face returned my gaze. It was an abandoned town, emptied of all its people, who had fled with fear in their eyes, like those peasants along the roadway.

But presently I saw a human form; it was the figure of a French dragoon with his carbine slung behind his back. He was stopping by the side of a number of gunpowder bags. A little further away were little groups of soldiers at work by two bridges, one over a stream and one over a road. They were working very calmly, and I could see what they were doing; they were mining bridges to blow them up at a given signal.

As I went further I saw that the streets were strewn with broken bottles and littered with wire entanglements, very artfully and carefully made.

It was a queer experience. It was obvious that there was very grim business being done, and that the soldiers were waiting for something to happen. At the railway station I quickly learned the truth; the Germans were only a few miles away, in great force. At any moment they might come down, smashing everything in their way and killing every human being along that road.

The station master, a brave old type, and one or two porters had determined to stay on to the last. "We are here," he said, as though the Germans would have to reckon with him; but he was emphatic in his request for me to leave at once if another train could be got away, which was very uncertain. As a matter of fact, after a bad quarter of an hour I was put on the last train to escape from this threatened town, and left it with the sound of German guns in my ears, followed by a dull explosion when the bridge behind me was blown up.

My train, in which there were only four other men, skirted the German army, and by a twist in the line almost ran into the enemy's country, but we rushed through the night, and the engine driver laughed and put his oily hand up to salute when I stepped out to the platform of an unknown station. "The Germans won't get us, after all," he said. It was a little risky, all the same.

The station was crowded with French soldiers, and they were soon telling me their experience of the hard fighting in which they had been engaged. They were dirty, unshaven, dusty from head to foot, scorched by the August sun, in tattered uniforms and broken boots; but they were beautiful men for all their dirt, and the laughing courage, quiet confidence, and unbragging simplicity with which they assured me that the Germans would soon be caught in a death trap and sent to their destruction filled me with admiration which I cannot express in words. All the odds were against them; they had fought the hardest of all actions—the retirement from the fighting line—but they had absolute faith in the ultimate success of their allied arms.

I managed to get to Paris. It was in the middle of the night, but extraordinary scenes were taking place. It had become known during the day that Paris was no longer the seat of the Government, which has moved to Bordeaux. The Parisians had had notice of four days in which to destroy their houses within the zone of fortifications, and, to add to the cold fear occasioned by this news, aeroplanes had dropped bombs upon the Gare de l'Est that afternoon.

There was a rush last night to get away from the capital, and the railway stations were great camps of fugitives, in which the richest and poorest citizens were mingled with their women and children. But the tragedy deepened when it was heard that most of the lines to the east had been cut, and that the only line remaining open to Dieppe would probably be destroyed during the next few hours. A great wail of grief arose from the crowds, and the misery of these people was pitiful.

Among them were groups of soldiers of many regiments. Many of them were wounded and lay on stretchers on the floor among crying babies and weary-eyed women. They had been beaten and were done for until the end of the war. But, alone among the panic-stricken crowd—panic-stricken, yet not noisy or hysterical, but very quiet and restrained for the most part—the soldiers were cheerful, and even gay.

Among them were some British troops, and I had a talk with them. They had been fighting for ten days without cessation, and their story is typical of the way in which all our troops held themselves.

"We had been fighting night and day," said a Sergeant. "For the whole of that time the only rest from fighting was when we were marching and retiring." He spoke of the German Army as an avalanche of armed men. "You can't mow that down," he said. "We kill them and kill them, and still they come on. They seem to have an inexhaustible supply of fresh troops. Directly we check them in one attack a fresh attack is developed. It is impossible to oppose such a mass of men with any success."

This splendid fellow, who was severely wounded, was still so much master of himself, so supreme in his common sense, that he was able to get the right perspective about the general situation.

"It is not right to say we have met with disaster," he said. "We have to expect that nowadays. Besides, what if a battalion was cut up? That did not mean defeat. While one regiment suffered, another got off lightly"; and by the words of that Sergeant the public may learn to see the truth of what has happened. I can add my own evidence to his. All along the lines I have spoken to officers and men, and the actual truth is that the British Army is still unbroken, having retired in perfect order to good positions—the most marvelous feat ever accomplished in modern warfare.

From Paris I went by the last train again which has got through to Dieppe. Lately I seem to have become an expert in catching the last train. It was only a branch line which struggles in an erratic way through the west of France, and the going was long and painful, because at every wayside station the carriages were besieged by people trying to escape. They were very patient and very brave. Even when they found that it was impossible to get one more human being on or one more package into the already crowded train they turned away in quiet grief, and when women wept over their babies it was silently and without abandonment to despair. The women of France are brave, God knows. I have seen their courage during the past ten days—gallantry surpassing that of the men, because of their own children in their arms without shelter, food, or safety in this terrible flight from the advancing enemy.

Enormous herds of cattle were being driven into Paris. For miles the roads were thronged with them; and down other roads away from Paris families were trekking to far fields with their household goods piled into bullock carts, pony carts, and wheelbarrows.

Two batteries of artillery were stationed by the line, and a regiment of infantry was hiding in the hollows of the grassy slopes. Their outposts were scanning the horizon, and it was obvious that the Germans were expected at this point in order to cut the last way of escape from the capital.

One of the enemy's aeroplanes flew above our heads, circled around, and then disappeared. It dropped no bombs and was satisfied with its reconnoissance. The whistle of the train shrieked out, and there was a cheer from the French gunners as we went on our way to safety, leaving them behind at the post of peril.

ST. PIERRE DU VAUVRAY, Sept. 6.—England received a hint yesterday as to a change in the German campaign, but only those who have been, as I have, into the very heart of this monstrous horror of war, seeing the flight of hundreds of thousands of people before an overwhelming enemy and following the lines of the allied armies in their steady retirement before an apparently irresistible advance, may realize even dimly the meaning of the amazing transformation that has happened during the last few days.

For when I wrote my last dispatch from Arques-la-Bataille, after my adventures along the French and English lines, it seemed as inevitable as the rising of next day's sun that the Germans should enter Paris on the very day when I wrote my dispatch. Still not a single shot has come crashing upon the French fortifications.

At least a million men—that is no exaggeration of a light pen, but the sober and actual truth—were advancing steadily upon the capital last Tuesday. They were close to Beauvais when I escaped from what was then a death-trap. They were fighting our British troops at Creil when I came to that town. Upon the following days they were holding our men in the Forest of Compiegne. They had been as near to Paris as Senlis, almost within gunshot of the outer forts.

"Nothing seems to stop them," said many soldiers with whom I spoke. "We kill them and kill them, but they come on."

The situation seemed to me almost ready for the supreme tragedy—the capture or destruction of Paris. The northwest of France lay very open to the enemy, abandoned as far south as Abbeville and Amiens, too lightly held by a mixed army corps of French and Algerian troops with their headquarters at Aumale.

Here was an easy way to Paris.

Always obsessed with the idea that the Germans must come from the east, the almost fatal error of this war, the French had girdled Paris with almost impenetrable forts on the east side, from those of Ecouen and Montmorency, by the far-flung forts of Chelles and Champigny, to those of Susy and Villeneuve, on the outer lines of the triple cordon; but on the west side, between Pontoise and Versailles, the defenses of Paris were weak. I say "were," because during the last three days thousands of men have been digging trenches and throwing up ramparts. Only the snakelike Seine, twining into Pegoud loop, forms a natural defense to the western approach to the city, none too secure against men who have crossed many rivers in their desperate assaults.

This, then, was the Germans' chance; it was for this that they had fought their way westward and southward through incessant battlefields from Mons and Charleroi to St. Quentin and Amiens and down to Creil and Compiegne, flinging away human life as though it were but rubbish for deathpits. The prize of Paris, Paris the great and beautiful, seemed to be within their grasp.

It was their intention to smash their way into it by this western entry and then to skin it alive. Holding this city at ransom, it was their idea to force France to her knees under threat of making a vast and desolate ruin of all those palaces and churches and noble buildings in which the soul of French history is enshrined.

They might have done it but for one thing which has upset all the cold-blooded calculations of their staff, that thing which perhaps I may be pardoned for calling the miracle. They might have done it, I think, last Wednesday and Thursday, even perhaps as late as last Friday.

I am not saying these things from rumor and hearsay, I am writing from the evidence of my own eyes after traveling several hundreds of miles in France during the last four days along the main strategical lines, grim sentinels guarding the last barriers to that approaching death which is sweeping on its way through France to the rich harvest of Paris, which it was eager to destroy.

There was only one thing to do to escape from the menace of this death. By all the ways open, by any way, the population of Paris emptied itself like rushing rivers of humanity along all the lines which promised anything like safety.

Only those stayed behind to whom life means very little away from Paris and who if death came desired to die in the city of their life.

Again I write from what I saw and to tell the honest truth from what I suffered, for the fatigue of this hunting for facts behind the screen of war is exhausting to all but one's moral strength, and even to that.

I found myself in the midst of a new and extraordinary activity of the French and English Armies. Regiments were being rushed up to the centre of the allied forces toward Creil, Montdidier, and Noyon. That was before last Tuesday, when the English troops [Transcriber: original 'toops'] were fighting hard at Creil.

This great movement continued for several days, putting to a severe test the French railway system, which is so wonderfully organized that it achieved this mighty transportation of troops with clockwork regularity. Working to a time table dictated by some great brain which in Headquarters Staff of the French Army, calculated with perfect precision the conditions of a network of lines on which troop trains might be run to a given point. It was an immense victory of organization, and a movement which heartened one observer at least to believe that the German deathblow would again be averted.

I saw regiment after regiment entraining. Men from the Southern Provinces, speaking the patois of the South; men from the Eastern Departments whom I had seen a month before, at the beginning of the war, at Chalons and Epernay and Nancy, and men from the southwest and centre of France, in garrisons along the Loire. They were all in splendid spirits and utterly undaunted by the rapidity of the German advance.

"It is nothing, my little one," said a dirty, unshaved gentleman with the laughing eyes of a D'Artagnan; "we shall bite their heads off. These brutal bosches are going to put themselves in a guetapens, a veritable deathtrap. We shall have them at last."

Many of them had fought at Longwy and along the heights of the Vosges. The youngest of them had bristling beards, their blue coats with turned-back flaps were war worn and flanked with the dust of long marches; their red trousers were sloppy and stained, but they had not forgotten how to laugh, and the gallantry of their spirits was a joy to see.

They are very proud, these French soldiers, of fighting side by side with their old foes. The English now, after long centuries of strife, from Edward, the Black Prince, to Wellington, are their brothers-in-arms upon the battlefields, and because I am English they offered me their cigarettes and made me one of them. But I realized even then that the individual is of no account in this inhuman business of war.

It is only masses of men that matter, moved by common obedience at the dictation of mysterious far-off powers, and I thanked Heaven that masses of men were on the move rapidly in vast numbers and in the right direction to support the French lines which had fallen back from Amiens a few hours before I left that town, and whom I had followed in their retirement, back and back, with the English always strengthening their left, but retiring with them almost to the outskirts of Paris itself.

Only this could save Paris—the rapid strengthening of the allied front by enormous reserves strong enough to hold back the arrow-shaped battering ram of the enemy's main army.

Undoubtedly the French Headquarters Staff was working heroically and with fine intelligence to save the situation at the very gates of Paris. The country was being swept absolutely clean of troops in all parts of France, where they had been waiting as reserves.

It was astounding to me to see, after those three days of rushing troop trains and of crowded stations not large enough to contain the regiments, how on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday last an air of profound solitude and peace had taken possession of all these routes.

In my long journey through and about France and circling round Paris I found myself wondering sometimes whether all this war had not been a dreadful illusion without reality, and a transformation had taken place, startling in its change, from military turmoil to rural peace.

Dijon was emptied of its troops. The road to Chalons was deserted by all but fugitives. The great armed camp at Chalons itself had been cleared out except for a small garrison. The troops at Tours had gone northward to the French centre. All our English reserves had been rushed up to the front from Havre and Rouen.

There was only one deduction to be drawn from this great, swift movement—the French and English lines had been supported by every available battalion to save Paris from its menace of destruction, to meet the weight of the enemy's metal by a force strong enough to resist its mighty mass.

It was still possible that the Germans might be smashed on their left wing, hurled back to the west between Paris and the sea, and cut off from their line of communications. It was undoubtedly this impending peril which scared the enemy's Headquarters Staff and upset all its calculations. They had not anticipated the rapidity of the supporting movement of the allied armies, and at the very gates of Paris they saw themselves balked of their prize, the greatest prize of the war, by the necessity of changing front.

To do them justice, they realized instantly the new order of things, and with quick and marvelous decision did not hesitate to alter the direction of their main force. Instead of proceeding to the west of Paris they swung round steadily to the southeast in order to keep their armies away from the enveloping movement of the French and English and drive their famous wedge-like formation southward for the purpose of dividing the allied forces of the west from the French Army of the East. The miraculous had happened, and Paris, for a little time at least, is unmolested.