ow absolutely imperative it was that we should
obtain an atrocity picture. The daughter of the burgomaster, who
was in charge, understood our plight and promised to do her best.
But out of the vast concourse she was able to uncover but one
case that could possibly do service as an atrocity.

It was that of a blind peasant woman with her six children. The
photographers told her to smile, but she didn't, nor did the older
children; they had suffered too horribly to make smiling easy.
When the Germans entered the village the mother was in bed with
her day-old baby. Her husband was seized and, with the other
men, marched away, as the practice was at that period of the
invasion, for some unaccountable reason. With the roof blazing
over her head, she was compelled to arise from her bed and drag
herself for miles before she found a refuge. I related this to a
German later and he said: "Oh, well, there are plenty of peasant
women in the Fatherland who are hard at work in the fields three
days after the birth of their child."

The Hall filled with women wailing for children, furnished
heartrending sights, but no victim bore such physical marks as the
most vivid imagination could construe into an atrocity.

"I can't explain why we don't get a picture," said the free lance.
"Enough deviltry has been done. I can't see why some of the stuff
doesn't come through to us."

"Simply because the Germans are not fools," replied the movie-
man; "when they mutilate a victim, they go through with it to the
finish. They take care not to let telltales go straggling out to damn
them."

Some one proposed that the only way to get a first-class atrocity
picture was to fake it. It was a big temptation, and a fine field for
the exercise of their inventive genius. But on this issue the chorus
of dissent was most emphatic.

The nearest that I came to an atrocity was when in a car with Van
Hee, the American vice-consul at Ghent. Van Hee was a man of
laconic speech and direct action. I told him what Lethbridge, the
British consul, had told me; viz., that the citizens of Ghent must
forthwith erect a statue of Van Hee in gold to commemorate his
priceless services. "The gold idea appeals to me, all right," said
Van Hee, "but why put it in a statue!" He routed me out at five one
morning to tell me that I could go through the German lines with
Mr. Fletcher into Brussels. We left the Belgian Army cheering the
Stars and Stripes, and came to the outpost