Part 2

Are you indicting a nation?

No, only a military system that ordered the slow sapping of friendly neighboring powers.

Only the host of "tourists," clerks, waiters, gentlemanly officers, that betrayed the hospitality of people of good will.

Only an army that practised mutilation and murder on children, and mothers, and old people,--and that carried it through coldly, systematically, with admirable discipline.

I believe there are multitudes of common soldiers who are sorry that they have outraged the helpless.

An army of half a million men will return to the home-land with very bitter memories. Many a simple German of this generation will be unable to look into the face of his own child without remembering some tiny peasant face of pain--the child whom he bayoneted, or whom he saw his comrade bayonet, having failed to put his body between the little one and death.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE CONQUERORS

PAGE THE SPY 3 THE ATROCITY 26 BALLAD OF THE GERMANS 45 THE STEAM ROLLER 48 MY EXPERIENCE WITH BAEDEKER 66

GOLDEN LADS

THE PLAY-BOYS OF BRITTANY 79 "ENCHANTED CIGARETTES" 95 WAS IT REAL? 113 "CHANTONS, BELGES! CHANTONS!" 127 FLIES: A FANTASY 152 WOMEN UNDER FIRE 168 HOW WAR SEEMS TO A WOMAN 192 LES TRAVAILLEURS DE LA GUERRE 234 REMAKING FRANCE 253

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

The Play-boys of the Western Front Frontispiece

Peasants' cottages burned by Germans 8

The home of a German spy near Coxyde Bains, Belgium 13

The green pass, used only by soldiers and officers of the Belgian Army 33

Church in Termonde which the writer saw 42

One of the dangerous Belgian franc-tireurs 51

Fifteenth century Gothic church in Nieuport 69

Sailors lifting a wounded comrade into the motor-ambulance 87

Door chalked by the Germans 105

Street fighting in Alost 123

Belgian officer on the last strip of his country 134

A Belgian boy soldier in the uniform of the first army which served at Liege and Namur 139

Belgians in their new Khaki uniform, in praise of which they wrote a song 145

Breton sailors ready for their noon meal in a village under daily shell fire 187

Sleeping quarters for Belgian soldiers 206