of sharpshooters.
Crouching behind a barricade, they were looking down the road.
They didn't know whether the Germans were half a mile, two miles,
or five miles down that road.

Into that uncertain No-Man's-Land we drove with only our honking
to disturb the silence, while our minds kept growing specters of
Uhlans the size of Goliath. Fletcher and I kept up a hectic
conversation upon the flora and fauna of the country. But Van
Hee, being of strong nerves, always gleefully brought the talk back
to Uhlans.

"How can you tell an Uhlan?" I faltered.

"If you see a big gray man on horseback, with a long lance,
spearing children," said Van Hee, "why, that's an Uhlan."

Turning a sharp corner, we ran straight ahead into a Belgian
bicycle division--scouting in this uncertain zone. In a flash they
were off their wheels, rifles at their shoulders and fingers on
triggers.

Two boys, gasping with fear, thrust their guns up into our very
faces. In our gray coats we had been taken for a party of German
officers. They were positive that a peasant was hanging in a barn
not far away. But we insisted that our nerves had had enough for
the day. Even Van Hee was willing to let the conversation drift
back to flowers and birds. We drove along in chastened spirit until
hailed by the German outpost, about five miles from where we had
left the Belgians. No-Man's-Land was wide in those days.

But what is it that really constitutes an atrocity? In a refugee shed,
sleeping on the straw, we found an old woman of 88. All that was
left to her was her shawl, her dress, and the faint hope of seeing
two sons for whom she wept. Extreme old age is pitiful in itself.
With homelessness it is tragic. But such homeless old age as this,
with scarce one flickering ray of hope, is double-distilled tragedy. If
some marauder had bayoneted her, and she had died therefrom, it
would have been a kindly release from all the anguish that the
future now held in store for her. Of course that merciful act would
have constituted an atrocity, because it would have been a breach
in the rules of the war game.

But in focusing our attention upon the violations of the code, we
are apt to forget the greater atrocity of the violation of Belgium, and
the whole hideous atrocity of the great war. That is getting things
out of proportion, for the sufferings entailed by these technical
atrocities are infinitesimal alongside of those resulting from the war
itself.

Another