dor Van Dyke's efforts were unavailing.
Possessing a red-card, I enlisted the help of Troelstra, the socialist
leader of the Netherlands.

He had just returned from an audience with the Queen. The
government, seeking to rally all classes to face a grave crisis, was
paying court to the labor leaders. Accordingly, the war department,
at Troelstra's behest, received me with a handsome show of
deference. I was escorted from one gold-laced officer to another.
Each one smiled kindly, listened attentively and regretted
exceedingly that the granting of the desired permission lay outside
his own particular jurisdiction. They were polite, ingratiating,
obsequious even, but quite unanimous. At the end I came out by
the same door wherein I went--minus a permission.

Up till now my progress through the fringes of the war zone had
been in defiance of all orders and advice. Having failed here
officially, I took the matter in my own hands. Finding a seat in a
military train, I stuck steadfastly by it so long as our general
direction was south. At Eindhoven hunger compelled me to alight.
As I was stepping up to the hotel-bar, I felt a tap on my shoulder
and some one in excellent English said:

"You are under suspicion, sir. Follow me. Don't look around. Don't
get excited. If you are all right you don't need to get excited; if you
aren't it won't do you any good to get excited."

With this running fire of comment he led me into a side-room
where a half-hour's examination satisfied him of my good intent.
Without further untoward incident I came to Maastricht in
Limbourg. Limbourg is the name of the narrow strip of Dutch
territory which runs down between Germany and Belgium. At one
place this tongue of land is but a few miles wide. If the Germans
could have marched their troops directly across this they might
have been spared the two weeks' slaughter at the forts of Liege
and Paris, in all probability, would have fallen before them. It was a
great temptation to the Germans. That's the reason the Dutch
troops had been massed here by the tens of thousands--to
prevent Germany succumbing to that temptation.

At our approach to the great Meuse bridge an officer shouted into
each compartment:

"Every window closed. All cigars and pipes extinguished."

"Why?" we asked.

"The bridge is mined with explosives and a stray spark might set
them off," a soldier informed us.

The first German attempt to set foot on the bridge would be the
s