The detraining stations are of sufficient length to accommodate the longest troop train (ten cars) easily, and they generally have at least four sidings apart from the through up-and-down lines. Moreover, at almost every station there are two lines of siding long enough for troop trains, so that they can be used to some extent as detraining stations, and so that a couple of troop trains can be held up at any time while traffic continues uninterrupted.
It is impossible to believe that this system was constructed for any other purpose than to prepare for the exigency which might some day force Germany to ignore the Treaty of 1839 and invade Belgium. At least it presumably accounts for the vast armies which invested Liége and Namur in the early days of last August.
Its existence, in both the light and the darkness of the Treaty of Neutrality, shows that Belgium was justified in taking any measures which were likely to preserve her national existence, so obviously threatened. That these measures were always within the letter and spirit of the treaty of 1839 is so much to her credit.
The strategic lines that Germany built on her frontier would have justified her in going further. Her obligations to herself and to her pledged protectors prevented this. Germany went on with her railway building unchallenged. She laboriously constructed an edifice which is both a monument and an altar—a monument to military forethought and expediency, an altar on which she has sacrificed her national honor.
GLORY OF WAR.
By ADELINE ADAMS.
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"SINGER, why are you white and sad, And staring through the stars?" "The friend and brother I once had Is fallen in the Wars." "Was he at Mons, or by the Aisne, Or near the Flanders shore?" "Also at Rheims, and in Lorraine, And places many more." "Had he no children, fair of limb?" "Yes, he had many sons, But most are fallen there with him, Before the monstrous guns." "And were the daughters of his heart Crushed also to the sod?" "The nun who saw their lot and part Died maniac, cursing God." "His wife?" "The woman lives, yet dies Daily, and with the grace Men say befits her sacrifice, As it befits her race." "What was her race, and your friend's rank? Was he of the first line? And was he Briton, Russ, or Frank, Or from beside the Rhine?" "Ah, many thousand times untold My friend was each of these, And went from mart or forge or fold, To drown in red, red seas!" |
Area of War in Western Europe.