Then the soldiers would curse under their breath and push
them roughly forward and the nuns would plead with them in their
soft, low voices, to hurry, hurry, hurry. We, who were watching the
scene, thought that few of them would reach the train alive, yet not
one was killed or wounded. The Arabs are right: the mad are under
God's protection.

One of the most inspiring features of the campaign in Belgium was
the heroism displayed by the priests and the members of the
religious orders. Village cures in their black cassocks and shovel
hats, and monks in sandals and brown woollen robes, were
everywhere. I saw them in the trenches exhorting the soldiers to
fight to the last for God and the King; I saw them going out on to the
battlefield with stretchers to gather the wounded under a fire which
made veterans seek shelter; I saw them in the villages where the
big shells were falling, helping to carry away the ill and the aged; I
saw them in the hospitals taking farewell messages and administering
the last sacrament to the dying; I even saw them, rifle in hand, on the
firing-line, fighting for the existence of the nation. To these soldiers
of the Lord I raise my hat in respect and admiration. The people of
Belgium owe them a debt that they can never repay.

In the days before the war it was commonly said that the Church
was losing ground in Belgium; that religion was gradually being
ousted by socialism. If this were so, I saw no sign of it in the nation's
days of trial. Time and time again I saw soldiers before going into
battle drop on their knees and cross themselves and murmur a
hasty prayer. Even the throngs of terrified fugitives, flying from their
burning villages, would pause in their flight to kneel before the little
shrines along the wayside. I am convinced, indeed, that the ruthless
destruction of religious edifices by the Germans and the brutality
which they displayed toward priests and members of the religious
orders was more responsible than any one thing for the desperate
resistance which they met with from the Belgian peasantry.

By the afternoon of October 3 things were looking very black for
Antwerp. The forts composing the Lierre-Waelhem sector of the
outer line of defences had been pounded into silence by the
German siege-guns; a strong German force, pushing through the
breach thus made, had succeeded in crossing the Nethe in the face
of desperate opposition; the Belgian troops, after a fortnight of
cont