The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1914-10-10

ern warfare. So far he had taken part only in a little shooting. The bayonet attack by which the advanced line was broken was made at a place called Croix Rouge, more than twenty miles away, and that night, under cover or the darkness, the rife pits were aban- doned and he got h1s company away without further loss
 His regiment fell back impressed he hind the fortified lines between NamIir and Sedan. entrained at a station call ed Mettet, and was sent northWard by Antwerp and Rotterdam to Haar- lem. Hence they marched into North Holland It was only after the march into Holland that he began to realize { the nonstrous and catastrophe nature of the. struggle in which he was play ing his undistinguish part
 He describes very pleasantly tha Journey through the hills and open land of Brabant, the repeated cross ing of arms of the Rhine and the change from the undulating scenery of Belgium to the flat, rich meadows, the suniit dike roads and the countless Windmifls of the Dutch levels. In those days there was unbroken land from Alkmaar and Leiden to the Dol Iart Three great provinces, south Holland, North Holland and Zuiderzee- land, reclaimed at various times be- tween the early tenth century and 1945 and all many feet below the level of the waves outside the dikes, spread out their lush poIders to the northern sun and sustained dense industrious population. An intricate web of laws and custom and tradition insured a perpetual vigilance and perpetual
 
 For more than 250 miles from Wal cheren to Friesland stretched a line of embankments and pumping stations that was the admiration of the world
 If some curious god had chosen to watch the course of events in thos6 northern provinces while that thanking march of the British was in progress he would have found a convenient and appropriate seat for his observation upon one of the great cumuIus clouds that, were drifting slowly across the blue sky during all these eEentfuI days before the great catastrophe, for that was the quality of the weatheE-hot and clear with something of 2 breeze and underfoot dry and a little inclined to be dusty. This watching god would have looked down upon broad stretch es of sunlit green, sunlit save for the creeping patches of shadow cast by the clouds; upon sky redecting meres. fringed and divided up by masses Of willow and large areas of silvery weeds; upon white roads lying bare to the sun and upon a tracery of blue ca- naIs The pastures were alive with cattle, the roads had a busy traffic of beasts and bicycles and gayly eolored peasants automobiles, the hues of the innumera bIe motor barges in the canal vied with the eventfulness of the roadways, and everywhere in solitary steadings, amid rtcks and barns, in groups by the wayside, in struggling Villages, each with its fine old church, or in compact towns laced with canals and abounding in bridges and clipped trees, were human habttatfons-
 The people of this countryside were not belligerents. The interests and sympathies alike of Holland had been so divided that to the end she remain ed undecided and passive in the strug- gle of the world powers. And every where along the roads taken by the marching armies clustered groups and crowds of impartiaIly observant spec tators, women and children ia peculiar white caps and old fashioned sabots and elderly, clean shaven men quietly
  had no fear of their invaders. The days when "soldiering'' meant bands of Hcentious looters had long since passed away.
 That watcher among the clouds would have seen a great distribution of khaki uniformed men and khaki painted material over the whole oe the sunken area of Holland. He would have marked the long trains, packed with men or piled with great guns and war material, creeping slow ly. alert for train wreckers, along the north going lines. He wouid have seen the Scheldt and Rhine choked with shipping and pouring out stiIL more men and still more material. He would have noticed halts and provi- sfonings and detratnments and the long, bustling caterpIllars of cavalry and infantry, the maggot-nke wagons. the huge beetles of great guns crawl ing under the poplars along the dFEes and reads northward. along ways fin ed by the neutral, unmolested, aHbig-J uously observant Dutch. All thef barges and shipping upon the canal8t had been requisitioaed for transport In that clear. bright, warm weather iti would all have looked from above Ike some extravagant fesSvaI of animated toys.
 (To Be continued.3
 
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