challenge the inclusion of 8 francs extra in his memorandum of
expenses. As indicated, he was a man of parts. The magic word of
the day, "France," now opened every gate to us.

Behind the Antwerp fortifications the Belgian sappers and miners
were on an organized rampage of destruction. On a wide zone
every house, windmill and church was either going up in flames or
being hammered level to the ground.

We came along as the oil was applied to an old house and saw
the flames go crackling up through the rafters. The black smoke
curled away across the wasted land and the fire glowed upon the
stolid faces of the soldiers and the trembling woman who owned it.
To her it was a funeral pyre. Her home endeared by lifetime
memories was being offered up on the altar of Liberty and
Independence. Starting with the invaders on the western frontier,
clear through to Antwerp by the sea, a wild black swathe had been
burnt.

By such drastic methods space was cleared for the guns in the
Belgian forts, and to the advancing besiegers no protection would
be offered from the raking fire. The heart of a steel-stock owner
would have rejoiced to see the maze of wire entanglement that ran
everywhere. In one place a tomato-field had been wired; the green
vines, laden with their rich red fruit, were intertwined with the steel
vines bearing their vicious blood-drawing barbs whose intent was
to make the red field redder still. We had just passed a gang
digging man-holes and spitting them with stakes, when an officer
cried: