ourselves believe that we had reached a zone where the physical,
tangible business of war went forward.

And Ostend and, after Ostend, the Belgian interior--those were
disappointments too; for at Ostend bathers disported on the long,
shining beach and children played about the sanded stretch. And, though
there were soldiers in sight, one always expects soldiers in European
countries. No one asked to see the passports we had brought with us,
and the customs officers gave our hand baggage the most perfunctory of
examinations. Hardly five minutes had elapsed after our landing before
we were steaming away on our train through a landscape which, to judge
by its appearance, might have known only peace, and naught but peace,
for a thousand placid years.

It is true we saw during that ride few able-bodied male adults, either
in the towns through which we rushed or in the country. There were
priests occasionally and old, infirm men or half-grown boys; but of men
in their prime the land had been drained to fill up the army of defense
then on the other side of Belgium--toward Germany--striving to hold the
invaders in check until the French and English might come up. The
yellow-ripe grain stood in the fields, heavy-headed and drooping with
seed. The russet pears and red apples bent the limbs of the fruit trees
almost to earth. Every visible inch of soil was under cultivation, of
the painfully intensive European sort; and there remained behind to
garner the crops only the peasant women and a few crippled, aged grand-
sires. It was hard for us to convince ourselves that any event out of
the ordinary beset this country. No columns of troops passed along the
roads; no camps of tents lifted their peaked tops above the hedges. In
seventy-odd miles we encountered one small detachment of soldiers--they
were at a railroad station--and one Red Cross flag.