ved in Matching's Easy that the German armies had
been defeated and very largely destroyed at Liege. It was a mistake not
confined to Matching's Easy.

The first raiding attack was certainly repulsed with heavy losses, and
so were the more systematic assaults on August the sixth and seventh.
After that the news from Liege became uncertain, but it was believed in
England that some or all of the forts were still holding out right up to
the German entry into Brussels. Meanwhile the French were pushing into
their lost provinces, occupying Altkirch, Mulhausen and Saarburg; the
Russians were invading Bukovina and East Prussia; the _Goeben_, the
_Breslau_ and the _Panther_ had been sunk by the newspapers in an
imaginary battle in the Mediterranean, and Togoland was captured by the
French and British. Neither the force nor the magnitude of the German
attack through Belgium was appreciated by the general mind, and it was
possible for Mr. Britling to reiterate his fear that the war would be
over too soon, long before the full measure of its possible benefits
could be secured. But these apprehensions were unfounded; the lessons
the war had in store for Mr. Britling were far more drastic than
anything he was yet able to imagine even in his most exalted moods.

He resisted the intimations of the fall of Brussels and the appearance
of the Germans at Dinant. The first real check to his excessive
anticipations of victory for the Allies came with the sudden
reappearance of Mr. Direck in a state of astonishment and dismay at
Matching's Easy. He wired from the Strand office, "Coming to tell you
about things," and arrived on the heels of his telegram.

He professed to be calling upon Mr. and Mrs. Britling, and to a certain
extent he was; but he had a quick eye for the door or windows; his
glance roved irrelevantly as he talked. A faint expectation of Cissie
came in with him and hovered about him, as the scent of violets follows
the flower.

He was, however, able to say quite a number of things before Mr.
Britling's natural tendency to do the telling asserted itself.

"My word," said Mr. Direck, "but this is _some_ war. It is going on
regardless of every decent consideration. As an American citizen I
naturally expected to be treated with some respect, war or no war. That
expectation has not been realised.... Europe is dislocated.... You have
no idea here yet how completely Europe is dislocated....

"I came to Europe in a perfectly fri