t has been holding the line on the Yser it has been
completely reuniformed, re-equipped, reorganized. The result is a
small but complete and highly efficient organism. The Belgian army
consists to-day of six infantry and two cavalry divisions--a total of
about 120,000 men--with perhaps another 80,000 being drilled in the
various training camps at the rear. It has, of course, no great
reserves to fall back upon, for the greater part of the nation is
imprisoned, but the King and his generals, by unremitting energy, have
produced a force which is as well disciplined and as completely
equipped as can be found anywhere on the front. When the day comes,
as it surely will, when Berlin issues the orders for a general
retirement, I shouldn't care to be the Germans who are assigned to the
work of holding off the Belgians, for from the men who wear the
red-yellow-and-black rosettes they need expect no pity.

Though the shortest of the lines held by the Allies, the Belgian front
is, in proportion to the free Belgian population, much the longest.
The northernmost sector of the Western Front, beginning at the sea and
extending through Nieuport, a distance of only three or four miles, is
held by the French; then come the twenty-three miles held by the
Belgians, another two or three miles held by the French, and then the
British. The Belgians occupy a difficult and extremely uncomfortable
position, for these Flemish lowlands were inundated in order to check
the German advance, and as a result they are in the midst of a vast
swamp, which, in the rainy season, becomes a lake. They are, in fact,
fighting under conditions not encountered on any other front save in
the Mazurian marshes. During the rainy season the gunners of certain
batteries frequently work in water up to their waists. So wet is the
soil that dugouts are out of the question, for they instantly become
cisterns, so the Belgian engineers have developed a type of
above-ground shelter which has concrete walls and a roof of steel
rails, on top of which are laid several layers of sand-bags. Though
these shelters afford their occupants protection from the fire of
small-caliber guns, they are not proof against the heavy projectiles
which the Germans periodically rain upon the Belgian trenches. As the
soil is so soft and slimy as to be useless for defensive purposes, the
trench-walls are for the most part built of sand-bags, which are,
however, usually filled with clay, for sand mus