"I'll see what I can do." Returning from the battle front our itinerary included a long stretch of the great road that runs between Paris and Brussels, a road much favored formerly by auto tourists, but now used almost altogether for military purposes.

Considering that we traversed a corner of the stage of one of the greatest battles thus far waged--Mons--and that this battle had taken place but a few weeks before, there were remarkably few evidences remaining of it.
With added force we remarked a condition that had given us material for wonderment in our earlier journeyings.

Though a retreating army and an advancing army, both enormous in size, had lately poured through the country, the houses, the farms and the towns were almost undamaged.
Certain contrasts which took on a heightened emphasis by reason of their brutal abruptness, abounded all over Belgium.

You passed at a step, as it were, from a district of complete and irreparable destruction to one wherein all things were orderly and ordered, and much as they should be in peaceful times.

Were it not for the stagnated towns and the depression that berode the people, one would hardly know these areas had lately been overrun by hostile soldiers and now groaned under enormous tithes.