families
carrying babies and what few household things they could fling together
in blankets. Covered wagons overflowed with men, women, and children.
The speed with which rumor spread was incredible. In one village a
group of half-drunken men, who insisted on jeering the Germans were put
at the head of a column and compelled to march several miles before they
were released. The word at once ran the length of dozens of highroads
that the Germans "were taking with them every one between fifteen and
fifty." I heard the same warning repeated on several of the roads about
Courtrai by men and women, panting, red-faced, stumbling blindly on from
they knew not what. Later, I met the same people, straggling back to
their villages, good-naturedly accepting the jibes of those who had
stayed behind.

A linen manufacturer who lived in the village of Deerlyck, not far from
Courtrai, where German scouts had been reported, kindly asked me to come
out and spend the night. For several miles we drove through the densely
populated countryside, past rows of houses whose occupants all seemed to
know him.

Women ran out to stop him and rattled away in Flemish; there were
excited knots of people every few steps, and the heads kept turning this
way and that, as if we were all likely to be shot any minute. We drove
into the courtyard of the solid old Flemish house--a house in which he
and his father before him had lived, with tiny rooms full of old
paintings, garden, stable, and hothouse packed close in the saving
Belgian fashion, and all as spick and span and shining as if built
yesterday--and then into the street again. It was interesting to watch
this square little man roll sturdily along, throwing out his stout arms
impatiently and flinging at the nervous villagers--who treated him
almost as a sort of feudal lord--guttural Flemish commands to keep cool
and not make fools of themselves.

All at once, coming out of nowhere, a wave of panic swept down the
street like a squall across a still pond.

"Bing--Bang!" went wooden shutters over windows, the stout housewives
flinging the bars home and gathering up their children. Doors slammed,
windows closed--it was like something in a play--and almost as soon as
it takes to tell it there was not a head, not a sound; the low houses
were one blank wall, and we stood in the street alone.

Just such scenes as this people must have known in the days when Europe
was a general battle-ground--