rickety red taxicab for the day; and piling in we told the driver to
take us eastward as far as he could go before the outposts turned us
back. He took us, therefore, at a buzzing clip through the Bois, along
one flank of the magnificent Forest of Soigne, with its miles of green-
trunked beech trees, and by way of the royal park of Tervueren. From
the edge of the thickly settled district onward we passed barricade
after barricade--some built of newly felled trees; some of street cars
drawn across the road in double rows; some of street cobbles chinked
with turf; and some of barbed wire--all of them, even to our
inexperienced eyes, seeming but flimsy defenses to interpose against a
force of any size or determination. But the Belgians appeared to set
great store by these playthings.

Behind each of them was a mixed group of soldiers--Garde Civique,
gendarmes and burgher volunteers. These latter mainly carried shotguns
and wore floppy blue caps and long blue blouses, which buttoned down
their backs with big horn buttons, like little girls' pinafores. There
was, we learned, a touch of sentiment about the sudden appearance of
those most unsoldierly looking vestments. In the revolution of 1830,
when the men of Brussels fought the Hollanders all morning, stopped for
dinner at midday and then fought again all afternoon, and by alternately
fighting and eating wore out the enemy and won their national
independence, they wore such caps and such back-buttoning blouses. And
so all night long women in the hospitals had sat up cutting out and
basting together the garments of glory for their menfolk.

No one offered to turn us back, and only once or twice did a sentry
insist on looking at our passes. In the light of fuller experiences I
know now that when a city is about to fall into an enemy's hands the
authorities relax their vigilance and freely permit noncombatants to