government frowned on the practice they always registered as Canadians, often giving as their local habitations such well known provinces of the dominion as Kentucky, Texas, or Oklahoma. ENGRAND DOVER gainsaid, although up to the time conscription was called for the wealthy class in Great Britain had contributed far more than its share of personal service to the war. More influential was the plea that conscription would develop in England a spirit of militar NETHERLANDS' CALAIS DUNKIRK OSTEND ANTWERP BOULOGNE GMENT LOUVAIN KILLE BELGIU GIUM LIEGE MONS NAMUR: CHARLEROI MAUBEUGE★ AIX-LA-CHAPELLE GERMANY LORRAINE Kitchener's army was raised entirely by volunteer enlistment. But Great Britain soon learned, as we were destined to learn three years later, that this method of raising large forces was inadequate and unjust. It skimmed the country of the cream of its citizenry. Those in whom patriotism and idealism beat highest were ready enough to volunteer. What we have called, often scoffingly, the British aristocracy, or the leisure class, responded almost to a man. The intellectual element was quick to don khaki. Novelists, poets and essayists flocked to the trenches. there was lethargy among the working classes, the clerks and the small tradesmen. By the time half-a-million men had been raised clear-sighted public men perceived that the safety of the nation would compel conscription. But But ★PARIS This map shows approximately the extent of the German advance to Sept. 6, 1914. The heavy lines with arrow tips show the general movement of the German advance; the heavy dotted lines, routes of parallel, but lesser columns. All territory between the line touching Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges and Amiens and the main line was filled with German troops. Raiding parties also reached Ostend and Boulogne this system was ism such as had long burdened the Continent and which might not give way after the war. But in the end, despite a remarkable spurt of volunteering on a plan devised by Lord Derby, conscription was put into effect. By the very flower of the German army, for to it was assigned the task which was expected to be the most glorious and the most spectacular, and, proving to be both of those, was the most arduous as well. Upon it the eyes of the civilized world were riveted for weeks. Against it fought Belgians, British, and French from the very outset of its operations, and before it merged its identity in the general German line it had withstood the assaults of infantry, cavalry, and artillery -and all with hardly a stop for food or sleep. It had met and fought Turcos from French Africa, and Sikhs and Hindoos from British East India. Commanded by General von Emmerich, it numbered at its entrance upon Belgian soil about 200,000 men, which number, oft depleted by heavy fighting, was continually reënforced until it approached the impressive total of a half million armed O Underwood & Underwood Ammunition supply for the Belgian Artillery which drove the Germans to make a hasty retreat after vainly trying to break the line that method Great Britain was enabled to put into the field 4,000,000 men by the middle of 1916, and to maintain her armies to their full quota thereafter throughout the war. It was August 4, 1914, that the German Army of the Meuse opened the war by crossing the Belgian frontier and at once coming into conflict with the Belgian forces. The Army of the Meuse was made up of men. No army of all history ever took the field so splendidly equipped with new and terrible engines of war as the armies of Germany, and particularly the Army of the Meuse in Underwood & Underwood Belgian Infantry on their way to reenforce the troops at Liège this campaign. Aeroplanes and dirigibles spied out the way, reported the positions of the enemy, and indicated to the artillery the range. Motor cars carried soldiers swiftly from point to point and hurried light guns into action; heavily armored, they had their place on the line of battle, and marked with the Red Cross they carried the wounded to places of safety. They propelled field kitchens which rumbled along beside the marching columns and served the men with meals without interrupting their advance. Rapid-fire guns poured out streams of bullets like water from a hose, and were so compactly built that one could be packed on a Belgian sharpshooters guarding Antwerp against German invasion. Here behind great water pipes they find a safe barricade from which to pick off daring Germans in advance of the main columns by motors even over plowed fields. They throw an armor-piercing shot weighing 800 pounds, and at seven miles will demolish a target of a few feet square. It was their deadly accuracy that beat down Belgian resistance at Liège and Namur. Almost forty-four years before to the day and hour the German troops had crossed into France at the beginning of the FrancoPrussian war which ended in such sweeping victory. The coincidence seemed a bright omen of victory and the German troops swept on into their enemy's country singing "Deutschland ueber Alles," and shouting their slogan of "Paris in three weeks. London in three months." But they were destined to find this a war of a very different sort. The peace as in time of war-had prepared contemplated the invasion of France from three points by three armies: The Army of the Meuse, with its base at Aix-la-Chapelle was to enter Belgium, reduce the forts at Liège, and march on Paris by a westerly route, taking in passing the forts at Namur and at Lille. The Army of the Moselle, already concentrated in Luxemburg, was to enter France at Longwy and proceed to Paris, subduing by the way the fortresses the way the fortresses at Verdun and Rheims. The Army of the Rhine, the only one not making neutral territory a part of its pathway, was to have its base at Strassburg and cross the French frontier near Nancy. By German infantry passing through the Belgian capital (Brussels) on their march to the French frontier and perhaps a detachment of British might come to the Belgian relief. It was looked upon as a fortified point of prodigious strength. Its fortresses were of the type which military science up to that time had fixed upon as approaching the impregnable. They were wrought steel turrets, curved so as to offer the poorest possible target for shells, looking like great black mushrooms, squatting close to the ground with a ditch surrounding each and a broad cleared space on every side. Underground passages connected the nine turrets, and there was the usual provision of mines, ditches, electrified barbed-wire entanglements, and other de guns, which afterward proved the sensation of the first weeks of the war. The fall of this, the most powerful of the Belgian works, opened a gap in the defenses of Liège, which was held with unprecedented gallantry for forty-eight hours by a comparatively few men, the greater part of whom were little better than civilians in training. During this period the Germans brought up their big howitzers, smashed two supporting fortresses, and opened the way to the city to the German advance. With the Liège forts silenced or left in the rear the army of von Kluck entered the city, made it a base and pressed on into Belgium. temptuously by the Germans were on French soil and hurrying to the front. King Albert, seeing the odds against his little army growing daily more desperate, and recognizing that men, not territory, would determine the outcome of the war, steadily withdrew before the advancing enemy. Brussels, the capital, was abandoned without defense, and the King and his army retired first to Antwerp and later to the far southwestern corner of Belgium in the neighborhood of Ostend where it has since maintained itself. It was It was during this period of the German advance through Belgium that there occurred the series of savage reprisals and persecutions less. In every town and village prominent men were seized as hostages and were relentlessly put to death if any citizen, maddened by the destruction of his property or insults offered to his womenkind, dared to attack the aggressors. The story of German atrocities in Belgium is not to be told here. It formed the subject of heated, diplomatic discussion in all the countries involved. It was investigated by a distinguished_commission, headed by Viscount James Bryce, whose name alone carries conviction of intellectual honesty to all informed readers. In every war men lose in some degree the semblance of humanity and cast off the |