battle-field, and Belgium open to the invader.

It was too late to get to Brussels, but there was still a train to
Antwerp. At Puers soldiers were digging trenches and stringing
approaches with barbed wire. The dikes had been opened and part of the
country flooded. Farther on we passed the Antwerp forts, then comely
suburbs where houses had been torn down and acres of trees and shrubs--
precious, as may be imagined, to a people who line their country roads
with elms and lindens like avenues in parks, and build monuments to
benevolent-looking old horticulturists--chopped down and burned. And
go, presently, into the old city itself, dull-flaming with the scarlet,
gold, and black, of the Belgian flag, and with something that seemed to
radiate from the life itself of this hearty, happy people, after all
their centuries of trade and war, and good food, and good art--like
their own Rubenses and Van Dycks.

There was no business, not a ship moving in the Scheldt. All who worked
at all were helping prepare for the possible siege; those who didn't
crowded the sidewalk cafes, listening to tales from the front, guessing
by the aid of maps whither, across the silent, screened southwest, the
German avalanche was spreading.

"Treason," "betrayal," "savagery," were on everybody's lips. For
Antwerp, you might say, had been "half German"; many of its rich and
influential men were of German origin, although they had lived in
Belgium for years. And now the Belgians felt they had lived there as
spies, and the seizure of Belgium was an act long and carefully planned.
One was told of the finding of rifles in German cellars, marked
"Preserves," of German consuls authorized to give prizes for the most
complete inventories of their neighborhoods turned in by amateur spies.