Belgium
herself is the capsheaf atrocity of the war. No matter what our
nationality, our race or our sentiments may be, none of us can get away
from that.
Going south into France from the German border city of Aix-la-Chapelle,
our automobile carried us down the Meuse. On the eastern bank, which
mainly we followed during the first six hours of riding, there were
craggy cliffs, covered with forests, which at intervals were cleft by
deep ravines, where small farms clung to the sides of the steep hills.
On the opposite shore cultivated lands extended from the limit of one's
vision down almost to the water. There they met a continuous chain of
manufacturing plants, now all idle, which stretched along the river
shore from end to end of the valley. Culm and flume and stack and kiln
succeeded one another unendingly, but no smoke issued from any chimney;
and we noted that already weeds were springing up in the quarry yards
and about the mouths of the coal pits and the doorways of the empty
factories.
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