our, spitting a murderous spray of lead as it bore down on the
advancing Germans. But when within a few hundred yards of the
German line the car slackened speed and stopped. Its petrol was
exhausted. Instantly one of the crew was out in the road and, under
cover of the fire from the machine-gun, began to refill the tank.
Though bullets were kicking up spurts of dust in the road or
ping-pinging against the steel turret he would not be hurried. I,
who was watching the scene through my field-glasses, was much more
excited than he was. Then, when the tank was filled, the car refused
to back! It was a big machine and the narrow road was bordered on
either side by deep ditches, but by a miracle the driver was able--
and just able--to turn the car round. Though by this time the German
gunners had the range and shrapnel was bursting all about him, he
was as cool as though he were turning a limousine in the width of
Piccadilly. As the car straightened out for its retreat, the Belgians
gave the Germans a jeering screech from their horn, and a parting
blast of lead from their machine-gun and went racing Antwerpwards.

It is, by the way, a curious and interesting fact that the machine-gun
used in both the Belgian and Russian armoured cars, and which is
one of the most effective weapons produced by the war, was
repeatedly offered to the American War Department by its inventor,
Major Isaac Newton Lewis, of the United States army, and was as
repeatedly rejected by the officials at Washington. At last, in despair
of receiving recognition in his own country, he sold it to Russia and
Belgium. The Lewis gun, which is air-cooled and weighs only
twenty-nine pounds--less than half the weight of a soldier's
equipment--fires a thousand shots a minute. In the fighting around
Sempst I saw trees as large round as a man's thigh literally cut
down by the stream of lead from these weapons.

The inventor of the Lewis gun was not the only American who
played an inconspicuous but none the less important part in the War
of Nations. A certain American corporation doing business in
Belgium placed its huge Antwerp plant and the services of its corps
of skilled engineers at the service of the Government, though I
might add that this fact was kept carefully concealed, being known
to only a handful of the higher Belgian officials. This concern made
shells and other ammunition for the Belgian army; it furnished
aeroplanes and machine-guns; it constructed mil