The road to Boom is like all the main roads of Belgium.  The central causeway was becoming worn by the constant passage of heavy motor lorries tearing backwards and forwards at racing speed.  The sides were deep in dust, for there had been little rain.  On each side rose poplars in ordered succession, and the long, straight stretches of the road were framed in the endless vista of their tall trunks.  And in that frame moved a picture too utterly piteous for any words to describe—­a whole country fleeing before the Huns.  The huge unwieldy carts of the Belgian farmer crept slowly along, drawn by great Flemish horses.  In front walked the men, plodding along beside the splendid animals, with whose help they had ploughed their fields —­fields they would never see again.  In the carts was piled up all that they possessed in the world, all that they could carry of their homes wrecked and blasted by the Vandals, a tawdry ornament or a child’s toy looking out pitifully from the heap of clothes and bedding.  And seated on the top of the heap were the woman and the children.

But these were the well-to-do.  There were other little groups who had no cart and no horse.  The father and a son would walk in front carrying all that a man could lift on their strong backs; then came the children, boys and girls, each with a little white bundle over their shoulder done up in a towel or a pillowslip, tiny mites of four or five doing all they could to save the home; and last came the mother with a baby at her breast, trudging wearily through the dust.  They came in an endless stream, over and over again, for mile after mile, always in the same pathetic little groups, going away, only going away.

At last, with a sigh of relief, we reached Boom, and the end of the lines of refugees, for the Germans themselves were not far beyond.  At the Croix Rouge we asked for instructions as to where we were likely to be useful.  Boom had been shelled in the morning, but it was now quiet, and there was no fighting in the neighbourhood.  We could hear the roar of guns in the distance on the east, and we were told that severe fighting was in progress in that direction.  The British had reinforced the Belgian troops in the trenches at Duffel, and the Germans were attacking the position in force.  Taking the road to the left, we passed the great brick-fields which provide one of the chief industries of Boom, and we drove through the poorer portion of the town which lies amongst them.  It was utterly deserted.  It was in this part of the town that the shelling had been most severe, but a large number of the shells must have fallen harmlessly in the brickfields, as only a house here and there was damaged.  If, however, the object of the Germans was to clear the town of inhabitants, they had certainly succeeded, for there was not a man, woman, or child to be seen anywhere.  It is a strange and uncanny thing to drive through a deserted town.  Only a few days before we had