ally was not looking
for any war. Plainly he was one who specialized in peace and the
pursuits of peace. Not even the proffered bribe of a doubled or a
tripled fare availed to move him one rod toward those smoke clouds. He
turned his car round so that it faced toward Brussels, and there he
agreed to stay, caring for our light overcoats, until we should return
to him. I wonder how long he really did stay.

And I have wondered, in idle moments since, what he did with our
overcoats. Maybe he fled with the automobile containing two English
moving-picture operators which passed us at that moment, and from which
floated back a shouted warning that the Germans were coming. Maybe he
stayed too long and was gobbled up--but I doubt it. He had an instinct
for safety.

As we went forward afoot the sound of the firing grew clearer and more
distinct. We could now hear quite plainly the grunting belch of the big
pieces and, in between, the chattering voice of rapid-fire guns. Long-
extended, stammering, staccato sounds, which we took to mean rifle
firing, came to our ears also. Among ourselves we decided that the
white smoke came from the guns and the black from burning buildings or
hay ricks. Also we agreed that the fighting was going on beyond the
spires and chimneys of a village on the crest of the hill immediately
ahead of us. We could make out a white church and, on past it, lines of
gray stone cottages.

In these deductions we were partly right and partly wrong; we had hit on
the approximate direction of the fighting, but it was not a village that
lay before us. What we saw was an outlying section of the city of
Louvain, a place of fifty thousand inhabitants, destined within ten days
to be turned into a waste of sacked ruins.

There were fields of tall, rank winter cabbages on each side of the
road, and among the big green leaves we saw bright red dots. We had to
look a second time before we realized that these dots were not the
blooms of the wild red poppies that are so abundant in Belgium, but the
red-tipped caps of Belgian soldiers squatting in the cover of the
plants. None of them looked toward us; all of them looked toward those
mounting walls of smoke.

Now, too, we became aware of something else--aware of a procession that
advanced toward us. It was the head of a two-mile long line of
refugees, fleeing from destroyed or threatened districts on beyond. At
first, in scattered, straggling groups, and t