The Winslow mail., 1914-10-03
THE WORLD SET FREE
CONTINUED from last issue)
CHAPTER v.
Intrenchine In Belgian Luxembourg.

its account of the experiences
of a common man during
the war time. While these terrific dis
closures of scientific possibility were
happening in Paris and Berlin Bar
net and his company were industri-
ously intrenching themselves in Bel
gian Luxembourg.
He tells of the mobilization and of
his summers day journey through the
north of France and the Ardennes in
few vivid phrases. The country was
Drowned by warm summer, the
trees a little touched with autumnaI
color and the wheat already golden.
When they stopped for an hour at Hir-
son men and women with tricolor
badges upon the platform distributed
cakes and glasses of beer to the
thirsty soldiers, and there was much
cheerfulness. "Such good, cool beer it
WASH he wrote. 81 had nothing to
eat nor drink since Epsom."
number of monoplanes, like giant
swallows" he notes, were scouting in
the pink evening sky.
Barnet's battalion was sent through
the Sedan country to a place called
Virton and thence to a point in the
woods on the line to Jemelle. Here
they detrained, bivouacked uneasily
by the railway-trains and stores were
passing along it all highland next
morning he marched eastward through
a cold, overcast dawn and a morning,
first cloudy and then blazing, over a
countryside interspersed by forest to-
ward Arlon.
There the infantry were set to work
upon a line of masked entertainments
and hidden rifle pits between st. Hu-
bert and Virton that were designed to
check and delay any advance from
the east upon the fortified line of the
Meuse They had their orders. and
for two days they worked without Ell
ther sight Of the enemy or any sus-
picion of the disaster that had abrupt
ly decapitated the armies of Europe
and turned the west of Paris and the
center Of Berlin into blazing minia-
lures of the destruction of Pompeii
And the news, when 1t did come,
came attenuated.' 1--WE heard there had
been mischief with aerOplanes and
bombs in Paris Barnet relates, "but
1t didn't seem to follow that they
weren't still somewhere celebrating
their plans and issuing orders When
the enemy began to emerge from the
woods in front of us We cheered and
blazed away and didn't trouble much
more about anything but the battle in
hand. If now and then one cooked up
an eye into the sky to see what was
happening there the rip of a bullet
soon brought one down to the horizon
tai again"
That battle went on for three days
all over a great stretch of country be-
tween Louvain on the north and Long
wy to the south 1t was essentially a
rife and infantry struggle. The aero
planes do not seem to have taken any
decisive share in the actual fighting for
some days, though no doubt they af-
fected the strategy from the first by
preventing surprise movements They
were aeroplanes with atomic engines,
but they weye not provided with atomic
bombs, which were manifestly insult
able for field use, nor indeed had they
any very effective kind Of bomb And,
though they maneuvered against each
other and there was rifle shooting at
them and between them, there was lit
tie actual aerial fighting Either the
air men were indisposed to fight or the
commanders on both sides preferred to
reserve these machines for scouting.
After a day or two of digging and
scheming Barnet found himself in the
forefront of a battle. He had made
his section of rifle pits chiefly along a
line of deep, dry ditch that gave a
means of intercommunication He had
had the earth scattered over the ad-
jacent field, and he had masked his
preparations with tussocks of corn and
poppy. The hostile advance came
blindly and unsuspiciously across the
fields below and would have been cruel
ly handled indeed if some one away to
the right had not opened fire too soon,
ut was a queer thrill when these
fellows came into sight" he confesses,
land not a bit like maneuvers. They
halted for time on the edge of the
wood and then came forward in an
open line. They kept walking nearer
to us and not looking at US, but away
to the right of US. Even when they
began to be hit and their officers whis-
ties woke them up, they didn't seem
to see us. One or two halted to fire
and then they all went back toward
the wood again. They went slowly at
first, looking round at us. then the
shelter of the wood seemed to draw
them and they trotted. | fired rather
mechanically and missed, then l fired
again, and then l became earnest tC
hit something, made sure of my sight
ing and aimed very carefully at a blue
back that was lodging about in the
corn. At first I couldn't satisfy my
self and didn't shoot, his movements
were so spasmodic and uncertain. theI