and that it was also possible, with caution, to bring certain
bodies--not the bulk of the army--forward through the Ardennes, to
command the passages of the Meuse above Liége, between that fortress
and Namur.

This latter operation was effected by the 12th of August, when the
town of Huy, with its bridge and its railway leading from the Belgian
Ardennes right into the Belgian Plain, was seized.

Meanwhile, upon the north of the river Meuse, cavalry and armed
motor-cars were similarly preparing the way for the general advance
when the northern forts of Liége should be dominated; and on this same
Wednesday, August 12th, the most advanced bodies of the invader lay in
a line roughly north and south from the neighbourhood of Diest along
the Gethe and thence towards Huy.

Of the outrages committed upon the civilian inhabitants in all these
country-sides, the Government of which was neutral, and the territory
of which was by the public law of Europe free not only from such
novel crimes but from legitimate acts of war, I shall not speak, just
as I shall not allude, save where they happen to have military
importance, to the future increase of similar abominations which
marked the progress of the campaign. For my only object in these pages
is to lay before the reader a commentary which will explain the
general strategy of the war.

[Illustration: Sketch 35.]

While this advance line of cavalry was engaging in unimportant minor
actions, or rather skirmishes (grossly exaggerated in the news of