Yet, if you took a step to the southwest--a figurative step in seven-league boots--you were where all hell broke loose.

War is a most tremendous emphasizer of contrasts.
These lines were written late in September, in a hotel room at Aix-la- Chapelle.

The writing of them followed close on an automobile trip to Liege, through a district blasted by war and corrugated with long trenches where those who died with their boots on still lie with their boots on.
Let me, if I can, draw two pictures--one of this German outpost town, and the other of the things that might be seen four or five miles distant over the border.
I have been told that, in the first flurry of the breaking out of the World-War, Aix was not placid.

It went spy-mad, just as all Europe went spy-mad--a mania from which this Continent has not entirely recovered by any means.

There was a great rounding up of suspected aliens.