Do you recall the school map on which the state of Texas was always
pink and Rhode Island green? And Canada a region without colour, and
therefore without existence?

The map of Europe has become a battle line painted in three colours:
yellow for the Belgian Army, blue for the British and red for the
French. It is really a double line, for the confronting German Army is
drawn in black. It is a narrow line to signify what it does--not only
death and wanton destruction, but the end of the myth of civilisation;
a narrow line to prove that the brotherhood of man is a dream, that
modern science is but an improvement on fifth-century barbarity; that
right, after all, is only might.

It took exactly twenty-four hours to strip the shirt off the diplomacy
of Europe and show the coat of mail underneath.

It will take a century to hide that coat of mail. It will take a
thousand years to rebuild the historic towns of Belgium. But not
years, nor a reclothed diplomacy, nor the punishment of whichever
traitor to the world brought this thing to pass, nor anything but
God's great eternity, will ever restore to one mother her uselessly
sacrificed son; will quicken one of the figures that lie rotting along
the battle line; will heal this scar that extends, yellow and blue and
red and black, across the heart of Western Europe.

It is a long scar--long and irregular. It begins at Nieuport, on the
North Sea, extends south to the region of Soissons, east to Verdun,
and then irregularly southeast to the Swiss border.

The map from which I am working was coloured and marked for me by
General Foch, commander of the French Army of the North, at his
headquarters. It is a little map, and so this line, which crosses
empires and cuts civilisation in half, is only fourteen inches long,
although it represents a battle line of over four hundred miles. Of
this the Belgian front is one-half inch, or approximately
one-twenty-eighth. The British front is a trifle more than twice as
long. All the rest of that line is red--French.

That is the most impressive thing about the map, the length of the
French line.

With the arrival of Kitchener's army this last spring the blue portion
grew somewhat. The yellow remained as it was, for the Belgian
casualties have been two-thirds of her army. There have been many
tragedies in Belgium. That is one of them.

In the very north then, yellow; then a bit of red; below that blue;
then red again in that long sweep