Fighting For Peace

ght home to us, and made painfully clear to our eyes and our hearts, by th

rave defense, and its last fort fell on the 15th, there were more fugitives. When Brussels was occupied without resistance on the 20th there were still more. As the invasion spread westward and southward, engulfing city after city in widenin

and irresistible, which recalled De Quincey's famous story of The Flight of a Tartar Tribe. No barrier on the Holland border could have k

tood with open doors and arms, offering a

ar the largest part of the financial burden of caring for the refugees. Regular subsidies were guaranteed for this purpose. But Holland gave freely and generously what was more important: a prompt and sufficient welcome and sh

enly thrown upon Holland by the deadly doings of the German Werwolf in Belgium, nor of the way in which

come, not in organized, orderly companies, but in droves-tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. They were da

e dumb, dri

his except run from hell as fast as

f sacking, old shawls, red-and-white-checkered table-cloths. The men, with drawn and heavy faces, waited patiently. The women collected and watched their restless flocks. The ba

t rowdies and other sons of Belial from the big towns, women of the pavements, and other wretched by-products of our social system. How could it be otherwise in a throng of ab

r a chance to board the train. Everything was full except the compartment reserved for us. We opened the door and asked them to get

ing three German shells fell in it and burst. The good wife and I" (here a wan smile) "thought the climate no longer sanitary. We ran away that night on foot.

e beds and the floors were all filled with sleepers. A big vacant factory building was fitted with improvised bunks and straw bedding. Two thousand five hundred people were lodged there. Open-air kitchens were set up. The burgomast

the houses. It was like a huge circus of distress. The city hall was turned into an emergency storehouse of food: the vaulted halls and chambers fil

houses. Twice, as we climbed the steep stairs, we stood aside for stretchers to be c

e of them was so weak that she could not speak, so short of breath that she could not lie down. As she sat propped with pillows, rocking slowly

tiful scraps and tatters of humanity. They were tenderly nursed and cared for, but their chance was slender. While I wa

ork had sent me considerable sums of money to use in helping the refugees. In the careful application of these funds I had the advice of Mr. Th. Stuart, President of the "Netherlands Relief Committee

ll, a house of detention for refractory persons, one hospital for general cases, and another for infectious diseases. It was all built of wood, simple and primitive, but as comfortable as could be expected under the conditions. The chief d

s the clever Burgomaster Yssel de Scheppe and his admirable wife-had the good idea of utilizing them for the refugees. It seemed a curious notion, to raise human plants under glass. But it worked finely. The houses were long and lofty; they had concrete floors and broad concrete platforms where the "cubicles" for the separate families could easily be erected; steam heat, elec

ounts for something in human affairs. The question arose whether it might not be wise to let them go home. Not to send them home, you understand. That was never even contemplated. But simply to allow them to return to their own country, at least in the regio

ets were silent and deserted as if the plague had passed there, and the only bustling life was in the central quarter, where "the field-gray ones" abounded; the closed shops, the house-fronts shattered by shells, the great cathedral standing in

he little villas stood empty, many of them half-ruined. (Perhaps one of them belonged to our friend the landscape-gardener.) We could see clearly the emplacements for the big German guns, which had been secretly laid long before the

e heaps of bricks and stones encumbered the streets so that it was hard to pick our way through. The smell of decaying bodies tainted the air. The fields had been inundated in the valleys; the water was subsiding; here and there corpses l

den. We stopped at the front yard of a little farmhouse, where the farmer's wife stood, and asked her some direc

in the fighti

be here. I ran away to Holland and returned yesterday to my house. But how shall I cre

t last in one of the streets we saw a little baker-shop. The upper story was riddled and broken. But the shop was untouc

ll us a lit

r. Not the window loaves, however; I have a fresh lo

here in th

ck after three days. You see, messieurs, some peopl

f it were a tit

huge belfry, Saint Rombaud's Tower, wherein hangs the famous carillon of more than thirty bells, was battered but still stood firm. The vast cathedral was a melancholy wreck of its former beauty and grandeur. The roof was but a skeleton of bare rafters; the side

n the sitting-room, trying to put it in order. Much of the furniture was destroyed; the walls were pitted with shrapnel-scars, but the cheap ornaments on the mantel were unbroken. In the ceiling was a