through the bristles. Among them was one chap in blue sailor's garb,
left behind doubtless when forty-five hundred naval reserves passed
through three days before to work the big guns in front of Antwerp.

We went on. At first there was nothing to show we had entered Belgium
except that the Prussian flag did not hang from a pole in front of every
farmhouse, but only in front of every fourth house, say, or every fifth
one. Then came stretches of drenched fields, vacant except for big
black ravens and nimble piebald magpies, which bickered among themselves
in the neglected and matted grain; and then we swung round a curve in
the rutted roadway and were in the town of Battice.

No; we were not in the town of Battice. We were where the town of
Battice had been--where it stood six weeks ago. It was famous then for
its fat, rich cheeses and its green damson plums. Now, and no doubt for
years to come, it will be chiefly notable as having been the town where,
it is said, Belgian civilians first fired on the German troops from
roofs and windows, and where the Germans first inaugurated their
ruthless system of reprisal on houses and people alike.

Literally this town no longer existed. It was a scrap-heap, if you
like, but not a town. Here had been a great trampling out of the grapes
of wrath, and most sorrowful was the vintage that remained.

It was a hard thing to level these Belgian houses absolutely, for they
were mainly built of stone or of thick brick coated over with a hard
cement. So, generally, the walls stood, even in Battice; but always the
roofs were gone, and the window openings were smudged cavities, through
which you looked and saw square patches of the sky if your eyes inclined
upward, or else blackened masses of ruination if you gazed straight in