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The Battles in Belgium

[An Associated Press Dispatch.]

LONDON, Oct. 26, 4:40 A.M.—­The correspondent of The Daily News, who has been in an armored train to the banks of the Yser, gives a good description of the battle in the North.  He says: 

“The battle rages along the Yser with frightful destruction of life.  Air engines, sea engines, and land engines deathsweep this desolate country, vertically, horizontally, and transversely.  Through it the frail little human engines crawl and dig, walk and run, skirmishing, charging, and blundering in little individual fights and tussles, tired and puzzled, ordered here and there, sleeping where they can, never washing, and dying unnoticed.  A friend may find himself firing on a friendly force, and few are to blame.

“Thursday the Germans were driven back over the Yser; Friday they secured a footing again, and Saturday they were again hurled back.  Now a bridge blown up by one side is repaired by the other; it is again blown up by the first, or left as a death trap till the enemy is actually crossing.

“Actions by armored trains, some of them the most reckless adventures, are attempted daily.  Each day accumulates an unwritten record of individual daring feats, accepted as part of the daily work.  Day by day our men push out on these dangerous explorations, attacked by shell fire, in danger of cross-fire, dynamite, and ambuscades, bringing a priceless support to the threatened lines.  As the armored train approaches the river under shell fire the car cracks with the constant thunder of guns aboard.  It is amazing to see the angle at which the guns can be swung.

“And overhead the airmen are busy venturing through fog and puffs of exploding shells to get one small fact of information.  We used to regard the looping of the loop of the Germans overhead as a hare-brained piece of impudent defiance to our infantry fire.  Now we know its means early trouble for the infantry.

“Besides us, as we crawl up snuffing the lines like dogs on a scent, grim trainloads of wounded wait soundlessly in the sidings.  Further up the line ambulances are coming slowly back.  The bullets of machine guns begin to rattle on our armored coats.  Shells we learned to disregard, but the machine gun is the master in this war.

“Now we near the river at a flat country farm.  The territory is scarred with trenches, and it is impossible to say at first who is in them, so incidental and separate are the fortunes of this riverside battle.  The Germans are on our bank enfilading the lines of the Allies’ trenches.  We creep up and the Germans come into sight out of the trenches, rush to the bank, and are scattered and mashed.  The Allies follow with a fierce bayonet charge.

“The Germans do not wait.  They rush to the bridges and are swept away by the deadliest destroyer of all, the machine gun.  The bridge is blown up, but who can say by whom.  Quickly the train runs back.