Chapter VII
The Last Stand Of The Belgians
1
During the first two and a half months of the war I was a wanderer in
France, covering many hundreds of miles in zig-zag journeys
between Nancy and the west coast, always on the move, backwards
and forwards, between the lines of the French and British armies, and
watching with a tireless though somewhat haggard interest the drama
of a great people engaged in a life-and-death struggle against the
most formidable army in the world. I had been in the midst of
populations in flight, armies in retreat, and tremendous movements of
troops hurled forward to new points of strategical importance. Now
and again I had come in touch with the British army and had seen
something of the men who had fought their way down from Mons to
Meaux, but for the most part my experience had been with the
French, and it was the spirit of France which I had done my best to
interpret to the English people.
Now I was to see war, more closely and intimately than before, in
another nation; and I stood with homage in my heart before the spirit
of Belgium and that heroic people who, when I came upon them, had
lost all but the last patch of territory, but still fought, almost alone, a
tenacious, bloody and unending battle against the Power which had
laid low their cities, mangled their ancient beauties, and changed their
little land of peaceful industry into a muck-heap of slaughter and
destruction.
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