If only those miles of trench and acres of barbed
wire had been placed ten miles away, and backed by British guns, the
story of Antwerp might have been a very different one.

The road to Boom is like all the main roads of Belgium. The central
causeway was becoming worn by the constant passage of heavy
motor lorries tearing backwards and forwards at racing speed. The
sides were deep in dust, for there had been little rain. On each side
rose poplars in ordered succession, and the long, straight stretches of
the road were framed in the endless vista of their tall trunks. And in
that frame moved a picture too utterly piteous for any words to
describe--a whole country fleeing before the Huns. The huge
unwieldy carts of the Belgian farmer crept slowly along, drawn by
great Flemish horses. In front walked the men, plodding along beside
the splendid animals, with whose help they had ploughed their fields
--fields they would never see again. In the carts was piled up all that
they possessed in the world, all that they could carry of their homes
wrecked and blasted by the Vandals, a tawdry ornament or a child's
toy looking out pitifully from the heap of clothes and bedding. And
seated on the top of the heap were the woman and the children.

But these were the well-to-do. There were other little groups who had
no cart and no horse. The father and a son would walk in front
carrying all that a man could lift on their strong backs; then came the
children, boys and girls, each with a little white bundle over their
shoulder done up in a towel or a pillowslip, tiny mites of four or five
doing all they could to save the home; and last came the mother with
a baby at her breast, trudging wearily through the dust. They came in
an endless stream, over and over again, for mile after mile, always in
the same pathetic little groups, going away, only going away.

At last, with a sigh of relief, we reached Boom, and the end of the
lines of refugees, for the Germans themselves were not far beyond.
At the Croix Rouge we asked for instructions as to where we were
likely to be useful. Boom had been shelled in the morning, but it was
now quiet, and there was no fighting in the neighbourhood. We could
hear the roar of guns in the distance on the east, and we were told
that severe fighting was in progress in that direction. The British had
reinforced the Belgian troops in the trenches at Duffel, and the
Germans were attacking the position in force. Ta