"Stop! No further passage here. You must turn back."

"Why?" we asked protestingly.

"The entire road is being mined," he replied.

Even as he spoke we could see a liquid explosive being poured
into a sort of cup, and electric wires connected. The officer
pictured to us a regiment of soldiers advancing, with the full tide of
life running in their veins, laughing and singing as they marched in
the smiling sun. Suddenly the road rocks and hell heaves up
beneath their feet; bodies are blown into the air and rained back to
the earth in tiny fragments of human flesh; while brains are
spattered over the ground, and every crevice runs a rivulet of
blood. He sketched this in excellent English, adding:

"A magnificent climax for Christian civilzation, eh! And that's my
business. But what else can one do?"

For the task of setting this colossal stage for death, the entire
peasant population had been mobilized to assist the soldiers. In
self-defense Belgium was thus obliged to drive the dagger deep
into her own bosom. It seemed indeed as if she suffered as much
at her own hands, as at the hands of the enemy. To arrest the
advancing scourge she impressed into her service dynamite, fire
and flood. I saw the sluice-gates lifted and meadows which had
been waving with the golden grain of autumn now turned into silver
lakes. So suddenly had the waters covered the land that hay-
cocks bobbed upon the top of the flood, and peasants went out in
boats to dredge for the beets and turnips which lay beneath the