SCENES IN THE GREAT WAR
spite of the occasional marauding of submarines, the offal of fighting craft) keeping the oceans free to all ships except those of our enemies. And now, when we hear it said, as we sometimes do, that Great Britain holds only thirty-five miles of land on the battle-front in Flanders, let us lift our heads and answer, "Yes, but she holds thirty-five thousand miles of sea."
THE PART PLAYED BY BELGIUM
One of the earliest, and perhaps one of the most
inspiring, of the flashes as of lightning whereby
we saw the drama of the war was that which
revealed the part played by Belgium. Has
history any record of greater heroism and greater
suffering? Such courage for the right! Such
strength of soul against overwhelming odds and
the criminal suddenness of surprise! Although
the world has been told by Germany's spokesmen,
including Herr Ballin, Prince von Bülow, and
even Professor Harnack (all "honourable men,"
and the last of them a churchman), that down
to a few days before the outbreak of hostilities
"not one human being" among them had
"dreamt of war," it is the fact that within a few
hours of the dispatch of Germany's ultimatum
to Belgium, before the ink of it could yet be dry
and while the period of England's ultimatum in