With the Allies

reopened it. But for eight days Brussels was isolated. The mail-trains and the telegraph office were in the hands of the invaders. Th

ing about them, for three days prevented any news from leaving the cit

sent open cables stating that their confidential despatches were being censored and delayed. They still were delayed. To get any message out of Brussels it was necessary to use an automobile, and nearly every automobile had taken itself off to Antwerp. If a motor-car appeared

city was arrested, so the only way to get messages through was by going on foot to Ostend or Holland, or by an automobile for which the German authorities had given a special pa

which, if he were arrested and the cables read, might bring him into greater trouble. Money for himself was n

ted and ordered back to Brussels, and our despatche

three times, got through by night, and when he arrived in England his adventures were published in all the Londo

ag flying from his automobile, he reached Antwerp and returned to Brussels only after many delays and adventures. Not knowing the Belgians were advancing from the north, Gibson and his America

p the first Zeppelin air-ship to visit that city passed over it, dropping one bomb at the end of the bl

visited a house that had been wrecked, and saw what was left of the bodies of those killed. People who were in the streets when

bombs of the size of shrapnel. Like shrapnel, on impact they scattered bullets over a radius of forty yards. One man, who from a window in the eighth story of a hotel w

n Brussels as a correspondent was gone, and I returned

sh prisoners and German wounded. In times of peace the trip to the German border lasts three hours, but i

hes and on the floor. It was not possible to obtain food, and water was as scarce. At Graes

ived on the country. He did not destroy it, and as against the burning of Columbia m

nly blackened walls and smouldering ashes. In no part of northern Europe is there a countryside fairer than that between Aix-la-Chapelle and Brussels,

their work kept us locked in the railroad carriages. But the story was written against the sky, was told to us by German soldiers incoherent w

torch and the execution of non-combatants, as given to Mr. Whitlock and myself on the morning I left Brussels by General von Lutwitz, the military governor, was this: The day before, while the German

diers in the open square below. He said also the Belgians had quick-firing guns, brought from Antwerp. As for a week t

"and for that Louvain must be wiped out-so!" In panto

"was a beautiful building; it

destroyed a kitchen-garden, his tone

m the eleventh century, and the population was forty-two thousand. The citizens were brewers, lace-makers, and manufacturers of

the college, I had seen hanging two American flags. I had found the city clean, sleepy, and pretty, with narrow, twisting

branches of candelabra. The town hall was an example of Gothic architecture, in detail and design more celebrated even than t

e building, with many chapels filled with carvings of the time of the Renaissance in

en, priest of the leper colony in the South

pty, exploded cartridges. Statues, pictures, car

z, money could have restored that city. Money can never restore Louvain. Great architects and artists, dead these six hundred years, made it beautiful, and their handiwork

faces the railroad station. The night was windless, and the sparks rose in steady, leisurely pillars, falling back into the furnace from w

, chapel, or private residence, it was destroyed. The occupants had been warned to go, and in each deserted shop or house the furniture was piled, the torch

f sheep, they were rounded up and marched through the night to concentration camps. We were not allowed to speak t

ain circled the burning city war was

r hill, and in consequence on both sides good men were wasted. But in those fights there were no wo

illiners and lace-makers; war brought to the bedside and the fireside; against wome

t the Germans were l

eird picture. On the high ground rose the broken spires of the Church of St. Pierre and the H?tel de Ville, and descending like steps were row beneath row of houses, roofless, with windows like blind eyes. The fire had reached the last row of houses, those on the Boulevard de Jodigne. Some of these were already cold, but others sent up steady, straight columns of flame. In

st. In the darkness the gray uniforms filled the station with an army of ghosts. You disti

s, all hemmed in by the shadowy army of gray wolves. Once they were halted, and among them were marched a line of men. These were on their way to be shot. And, better to poin

ds, neighbors of long standing, men of their own household. The officer bellowing at them from the cart was il

arks to meet the kind, calm stars, was only a painted backdrop; that the reports of rifles from the dark ruins came from blank cartridges, and that these trembling sh

ilized. And then you remembered that the German E