friends and the sheer envy and despair of their German foes. The fact
alone that our men are better found and better fed than the enemy gives
them an advantage over and above their three-to-one equivalent of the
individual kind.

[Continued overleaf.




__________________________________________________________________________
THE ILLUSTRATED WAR NEWS, NOV. 18, 1914--7


[Illustration: A WAIST-DEEP SHELL-HOLE IN A BELGIAN STREET: IN A
WAR-WRECKED WEST FLANDERS TOWNSHIP.]

The devastating effect of shell-fire on human habitations is brought out
with appealing effect by the photograph which we give above of the scene
in one of the ill-fated Belgian townships on the frontier of West
Flanders. Wrecked and ruined houses with their walls leaning over and
tottering, about to fall in ruin, and the heaps of littered débris in the
street tell a fearful tale of what the havoc from a bombardment by heavy
projectiles means for the hapless inhabitants of the place. The tremendous
force of the impact with which the shells crash down is shown at the same
time by the man seen in the foreground of the photograph standing up to
the waist in one of the gaping cavities in the ground that the shells make
where they strike. In some of the houses they smash through from roof to
cellar.--[Photo. by Illus. Bureau.]