In writing of the battles in Belgium I find myself at a loss as to what
names to give them. After the treaty-makers have affixed their
signatures to a piece of parchment and the arm-chair historians
have settled down to the task of writing a connected account of the
campaign, the various engagements will doubtless be properly
classified and labelled--and under the names which they will receive
in the histories we, who were present at them, will probably not
recognize them at all. Until such time, then, as history has granted
them the justice of perspective, I can only refer to them as "the fight
at Sempst" or "the first engagement at Alost" or "the battle of
Vilvorde" or "the taking of Termonde." Not only this, but the
engagements that seemed to us to be battles, or remarkably lifelike
imitations of battles, may be dismissed by the historians as
unimportant skirmishes and contacts, while those engagements that
we carelessly referred to at the time as "scraps" may well prove, in
the light of future events, to have been of far greater significance
than we realized. I don't even know how many engagements I
witnessed, for I did not take the trouble to keep count. Thompson,
who was with me from the beginning of the campaign to the end,
told a reporter who interviewed him upon his return to London that
we had been present at thirty-two engagements, large and small.
Though I do not vouch, mind you, for the accuracy of this assertion,
it is not as improbable as it sounds, for, from the middle of August to
the fall of Antwerp in the early part of October, it was a poor day that
didn't produce a fight of some sort. The fighting in Belgium at this
stage of the war may be said to have been confined to an area
within a triangle whose corners were Antwerp, Aerschot and
Termonde. The southern side of this triangle, which ran somewhat
to the south of Malines, was nearly forty miles in length, and it was
this forty-mile front, extending from Aerschot on the east to
Termonde on the west, which, during the earlier stages of the
campaign, formed the Belgian battle-line. As the campaign
progressed and the Germans developed their offensive, the
Belgians were slowly forced back within the converging sides of the
triangle until they were squeezed into the angle formed by Antwerp,
where they made their last stand.

The theatre of operations was, from the standpoint of a professional
onlooker like myself, very inconsiderately arranged. Natu