bodies--not the bulk of the army--forward through the Ardennes, to
command the passages of the Meuse above Liege, between that fortress
and Namur.

This latter operation was effected by the 12th of August, when the
town of Huy, with its bridge and its railway leading from the Belgian
Ardennes right into the Belgian Plain, was seized.

Meanwhile, upon the north of the river Meuse, cavalry and armed
motor-cars were similarly preparing the way for the general advance
when the northern forts of Liege should be dominated; and on this same
Wednesday, August 12th, the most advanced bodies of the invader lay in
a line roughly north and south from the neighbourhood of Diest along
the Gethe and thence towards Huy.

Of the outrages committed upon the civilian inhabitants in all these
country-sides, the Government of which was neutral, and the territory
of which was by the public law of Europe free not only from such
novel crimes but from legitimate acts of war, I shall not speak, just
as I shall not allude, save where they happen to have military
importance, to the future increase of similar abominations which
marked the progress of the campaign. For my only object in these pages
is to lay before the reader a commentary which will explain the
general strategy of the war.

[Illustration: Sketch 35.]

While this advance line of cavalry was engaging in unimportant minor
actions, or rather skirmishes (grossly exaggerated in the news of
those days), the attack on the northern forts of Liege, upon which
everything now depended, was opened. It was upon Thursday, August
13th, that the 280 mm. howitzers opened upon Loncin. Other of the
remaining forts were bombarded; but, as in the case of Fleron a week
before, we need not consider the subsidiary operations, because
everything depended upon the fort of Loncin, which, as the
accompanying diagram shows, commanded the railway line westward from
Liege. General Leman himself was within that work, the batteries
against which were now operating from _within_ the ring--that is, from
the city itself, or in what soldiers technically call "reverse"--that
is, from the side upon which no fort is expected to stand, the side
which is expected to defend and not to be attacked from. Whether
Loncin held out the full forty-eight hours, or only forty, or only
thirty-six, we do not know; but that moral factor to which I have
already alluded, and which must be fully weighed in war, was again
strengthen