Nothing is more unwise, on general principles, than to attempt to
write about a war before that war is finished and before history has
given it the justice of perspective. The campaign which began with
the flight of the Belgian Government from Brussels and which
culminated in the fall of Antwerp formed, however, a separate and
distinct phase of the Greatest of Wars, and I feel that I should write
of that campaign while its events are still sharp and clear in my
memory and before the impressions it produced have begun to
fade. I hope that those in search of a detailed or technical account
of the campaign in Flanders will not read this book, because they
are certain to be disappointed. It contains nothing about strategy or
tactics and few military lessons can be drawn from it. It is merely the
story, in simple words, of what I, a professional onlooker, who was
accorded rather exceptional facilities for observation, saw in
Belgium during that nation's hour of trial.

An American, I went to Belgium at the beginning of the war with an open
mind. I had few, if any, prejudices. I knew the English, the French,
the Belgians, the Germans equally well. I had friends in all four
countries and many happy recollections of days I had spent in each.
When I left Antwerp after the German occupation I was as pro-Belgian
as though I had been born under the red-black-and-yellow banner. I had
seen a country, one of the loveliest and most peaceable in Europe,
invaded by a ruthless and brutal soldiery; I had seen its towns and
cities blackened by fire and broken by shell; I had seen its churches
and its historic monuments destroyed; I had seen its highways crowded
with hunted, homeless fugitives; I had seen its fertile fields strewn
with the corpses of what had once been the manhood of the nation; I
had seen its women left husbandless and its children left fatherless;
I had seen what was once a Garden of the Lord turned into a land of