Fighting in Flanders

by E. Alexander Powell
Special Correspondent of The New York World
With Photographs by Mr. Donald Thompson
The Siege and Fall of Antwerp
Foreword
Nothing is more unwise, on general principles, than to attempt to write
about a war before that war is finished and before history has given it
the justice of perspective. The campaign which began with the flight of
the Belgian Government from Brussels and which culminated in the
fall of Antwerp formed, however, a separate and distinct phase of the
Greatest of Wars, and I feel that I should write of that campaign while
its events are still sharp and clear in my memory and before the
impressions it produced have begun to fade. I hope that those in search
of a detailed or technical account of the campaign in Flanders will not
read this book, because they are certain to be disappointed. It contains
nothing about strategy or tactics and few military lessons can be drawn
from it. It is merely the story, in simple words, of what I, a professional
onlooker, who was accorded rather exceptional facilities for
observation, saw in Belgium during that nation's hour of trial.
An American, I went to Belgium at the beginning of the war with an
open mind. I had few, if any, prejudices. I knew the English, the French,
the Belgians, the Germans equally well. I had friends in all four
countries and many happy recollections of days I had spent in each.
When I left Antwerp after the German occupation I was as pro-Belgian
as though I had been born under the red-black-and- yellow banner. I
had seen a country, one of the loveliest and most peaceable in Europe,
invaded by a ruthless and brutal soldiery; I had seen its towns and cities
blackened by fire and broken by shell; I had seen its churches and its
historic monuments destroyed; I had seen its highways crowded with

hunted, homeless fugitives; I had seen its fertile fields strewn with the
corpses of what had once been the manhood of the nation; I had seen its
women left husbandless and its children left fatherless; I had seen what
was once a Garden of the Lord turned into a land of desolation; and I
had seen its people--a people whom I, like the rest of the world, had
always thought of as pleasure-loving, inefficient, easy-going--I had
seen this people, I say, aroused, resourceful, unafraid, and fighting,
fighting, fighting. Do you wonder that they captured my imagination,
that they won my admiration? I am pro-Belgian; I admit it frankly. I
should be ashamed to be anything else.
E. Alexander Powell
London, November 1, 1914.
I. The War Correspondents
War correspondents regard war very much as a doctor regards sickness.
I don't suppose that a doctor is actually glad that people are sick, but so
long as sickness exists in the world he feels that he might as well get
the benefit of it. It is the same with war correspondents. They do not
wish anyone to be killed on their account, but so long as men are going
to be killed anyway, they want to be on hand to witness the killing and,
through the newspapers, to tell the world about it. The moment that the
war broke out, therefore, a veritable army of British and American
correspondents descended upon the Continent. Some of them were men
of experience and discretion who had seen many wars and had a right
to wear on their jackets more campaign ribbons than most generals.
These men took the war seriously. They were there to get the news and,
at no matter what expenditure of effort and money, to get that news to
the end of a telegraph-wire so that the people in England and America
might read it over their coffee-cups the next morning. These men had
unlimited funds at their disposal; they had the united influence of
thousands of newspapers and of millions of newspaper-readers solidly
behind them; and they carried in their pockets letters of introduction
from editors and ex-presidents and ambassadors and prime ministers.
Then there was an army corps of special writers, many of them with

well-known names, sent out by various newspapers and magazines to
write "mail stuff," as dispatches which are sent by mail instead of
telegraph are termed, and "human interest" stories. Their qualifications
for reporting the greatest war in history consisted, for the most part, in
having successfully "covered" labour troubles and murder trials and
coronations and presidential conventions, and, in a few cases, Central
American revolutions. Most of the stories which they sent home were
written in comfortable hotel rooms in London or Paris or Rotterdam or
Ostend. One of these correspondents, however, was not content with a
hotel window viewpoint. He wanted to see some