re had
provided neither orchestra-stalls nor boxes. All the seats were bad.
In fact it was quite impossible to obtain a good view of the stage and
of the uniformed actors who were presenting the most stupendous
spectacle in all history upon it. The whole region, you see, was
absolutely flat--as flat as the top of a table--and there wasn't
anything even remotely resembling a hill anywhere. To make
matters worse, the country was criss-crossed by a perfect network
of rivers and brooks and canals and ditches; the highways and the
railways, which had to be raised to keep them from being washed
out by the periodic inundations, were so thickly screened by trees as
to be quite useless for purposes of observation; and in the rare
places where a rise in the ground might have enabled one to get a
comprehensive view of the surrounding country, dense groves of
trees or red-and-white villages almost invariably intervened. One
could be within a few hundred yards of the firing-line and literally not
see a thing save the fleecy puffs of bursting shrapnel. Indeed, I
don't know what we should have done had it not been for the church
towers. These were conveniently sprinkled over the landscape--
every cluster of houses seemed to have one--and did their best to
make up for the region's topographical shortcomings. The only
disadvantage attaching to the use of the church-spires as places to
view the fighting from was that the military observers and the
officers controlling the fire of the batteries used them for the same
purpose. The enemy knew this, of course, and almost the first thing
he did, therefore, was to open fire on them with his artillery and drive
those observers out. This accounts for the fact that in many
sections of Belgium there is not a church-spire left standing. When
we ascended a church tower, therefore, for the purpose of obtaining
a general view of an engagement, we took our chances and we
knew it. More than once, when the enemy got the range and their
shells began to shriek and yowl past the belfry in which I was
stationed, I have raced down the rickety ladders at a speed which,
under normal conditions, would probably have resulted in my
breaking my neck. In view of the restrictions imposed upon
correspondents in the French and Russian theatres of war, I
suppose that instead of finding fault with the seating arrangements I
should thank my lucky stars that I did not have to write my
dispatches with the aid of an ordnanc