give me credentials, but on the day I was to receive them the
government moved to Antwerp. Then the Germans entered Brussels,
and, as no one could foresee that Belgium would heroically continue
fighting, on the chance the Germans would besiege Paris, I planned
to go to that city. To be bombarded you do not need credentials.

For three days a steel-gray column of Germans had been sweeping
through Brussels, and to meet them, from the direction of Vincennes
and Lille, the English and French had crossed the border. It was
falsely reported that already the English had reached Hal, a town only
eleven miles from Brussels, that the night before there had been a
fight at Hal, and that close behind the English were the French.

With Gerald Morgan, of the London Daily Telegraph, with whom I had
been in other wars, I planned to drive to Hal and from there on foot
continue, if possible, into the arms of the French or English. We both
were without credentials, but, once with the Allies, we believed we
would not need them. It was the Germans we doubted. To satisfy
them we had only a passport and a laissez-passer issued by General
von Jarotsky, the new German military governor of Brussels, and his
chief of staff, Lieutenant Geyer. Mine stated that I represented the
Wheeler Syndicate of American newspapers, the London Daily
Chronicle, and Scribner's Magazine, and that I could pass German
military lines in Brussels and her environs. Morgan had a pass of the
same sort. The question to be determined was: What were "environs"
and how far do they extend? How far in safety would the word carry
us forward?

On August 23 we set forth from Brussels in a taxicab to find out. At
Hal, where we intended to abandon the cab and continue on foot, we