broken, furniture destroyed, and
the walls demolished by shell fire. Even the churches have not been
respected. The parish church at Haelen has been damaged considerably
from shrapnel fire, "On the battlefield there are many graves of Germans
marked by German lances erected in the form of a cross."

ON THE BATTLEFIELD OF DIEST

A correspondent of the New York Tribune said:

"Across the battlefield of Diest there is a brown stretch of harrowed
ground half a furlong in length. It is the grave of twelve hundred
Germans who fell in the fight of August 11. All over the field there are
other graves, some of Germans, some of Belgians, some of horses. When I
reached the place peasants with long mattocks and spades were turning in
the soil. For two full days they had been at the work of burial and they
were sick at heart. Their corn is ripe for cutting in the battlefield,
but little of it will be harvested. Dark paths in their turnip fields
are sodden with the blood of men and horses."

The Belgians, in contempt of German markmanship, had forced the enemy
to the attack, which had been made from three points of the field
simultaneously. The fighting had been fierce, but now that both sides
had swept on, no one seemed to know how those in the fight had really
fared. Only by the heaps of dead could one make estimate:

"At least, there were most dead on the side toward the bridge. A charge
of 300 Uhlans, who were held in check for a short time by seventeen
Belgians at a corner, seems, however, to have come near success. The
derelict helmets and lances that covered the fields show that the charge
pressed well up to the guns and to the trenches in the turnip fields
where the Belgian soldiers lay. On the German left mitrailleuses got in
their work behind, and in the houses on the outskirts of the villages.
Five of these houses were burned to the ground, and two others farther
out broken all to pieces and burned. In a shed was a peasant weeping
over the dead bodies of his cows.

"It would be easy now at the beginning of this war to write of its
tragedy. The villages have each a tale of loss to tell. All of the
twelve hundred men in the long grave were men with wives, sweethearts,
and parents. All the Belgian soldiers and others who were buried where
they fell have mourners. A LETTER FROM THE GRAVE

"A letter which I picked up on the field and am endeavoring to have
identified and sent her for whom it is intended will speak for al