It had been planned to show me first a detail map of the places I was
to visit, and with this map before me to explain the present position
of the Belgian line along the embankment of the railroad from Nieuport
to Dixmude. The map was ready on a table in the officers' mess, a bare
room with three long tables of planks, to which a flight of half a
dozen steps led from the headquarters room below.

Twilight had fallen by that time. It had commenced to rain. I could
see through the window heavy drops that stirred the green surface of
the moat at one side of the old building. On the wall hung the
advertisement of an American harvester, a reminder of more peaceful
days. The beating of the rain kept time to the story Captain F----
told that night, bending over the map and tracing his country's ruin
with his forefinger.

Much of it is already history. The surprise and fury of the Germans on
discovering that what they had considered a contemptible military
force was successfully holding them back until the English and French
Armies could get into the field; the policy of systematic terrorism
that followed this discovery; the unpreparedness of Belgium's allies,
which left this heroic little army practically unsupported for so long
against the German tidal wave.

The great battle of the Yser is also history. I shall not repeat the
dramatic recital of the Belgian retreat to this point, fighting a
rear-guard engagement as they fell back before three times their
number; of the fury of the German onslaught, which engaged the entire
Belgian front, so that there was no rest, not a moment's cessation. In
one night at Dixmude the Germans made fifteen attacks. Is it any
wonder that two-thirds of Belgium's Army is gone?

They had fought since the third of August. It was on the twenty-first
of October that they at last retired across the Yser and two days
later took up their present position at the railway embankment. On
that day, the twenty-third of October, the first French troops arrived
to assist them, some eighty-five hundred reaching Nieuport.

It was the hope of the Belgians that, the French taking their places
on the line, they could retire for a time as reserves and get a little
rest. But the German attack continuing fiercely against the combined
armies of the Allies, the Belgians were forced to go into action
again, weary as they were, at the historic curve of the Yser, where
was fought the great battle of the war. At Brit