y had been held sacred for more than eighty years and was to
last as long as time. It had held them secure during the great crisis of
1870-1871 and when the war cloud gathered in Austria and Servia they
felt secure.

Soon, however, it became plain that Germany had been planning for years
to crush this little country like an egg shell. Four double-track lines
of railway had been built up to the Belgian border. Miles of concrete
platforms had been built, but no suspicions had been aroused. When the
enemy started across Belgium he had better maps of the country than any
Belgian had ever seen. At once many Germans in Belgium left their homes
silently and the surprise of Belgian neighbors can be better imagined
than described when they saw their old friends coming back with the
enemy's army. They had been spies all these years.

When the great siege guns were brought from their hiding places in the
Krupp factories into Belgium, the foundations for them were already
there. These guns were so heavy that the London Times stated that it
took thirteen traction engines to pull a single one of them. They threw
shells that weighed almost a ton twenty miles and a single one of them
would destroy a building as large as our own national capital building
in Washington. So accurately had these foundations been placed that
scarcely a single shell was wasted.

It is said that years ago some so-called German university men asked the
Belgian Government for permission to study the geology of their country.
This permission was granted freely. But these were mostly military men
and spent months investigating and surveying and marking certain places.
Once more these men came to the Belgian Government stating that they
wished to study the formation of rocks and soil which would necessitate
digging into the earth and as they did not wish to be bothered by the
public, asked permission to build barricades around the places where
they worked. Their request was granted instantly and by this means they
built the foundations for these great siege guns.

Finally the fateful day came. Germany told Belgium that she intended
going across her territory anyway and if she would allow this to be done
peaceably she would pay her double price for everything destroyed; that
it would be to her best interests to allow this and that she might have
twelve hours to think it over. In the darkest hours of the war, when it
seemed that the Germans would be victorious, I