So you see the toes of the town touch
two foreign frontiers; and of all German cities it is the most westerly
and, therefore, closest of all to the zone of action in the west of
Europe.
You would never guess it, however. When we landed in Aix-la-Chapelle,
coming out of the heart of the late August hostilities in Belgium, we
marveled; for, behold, here was a clean, white city that, so far as the
look of it and the feel of it went, might have been a thousand miles
from the sound of gunfire. On that Sabbath morning of our arrival an
air of everlasting peace abode with it. That same air of peace
continued to abide with it during all the days we spent here. 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.
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