were compelled to do these things in order to accomplish our military goal, which must be achieved at all costs." And with this ideal in view, they raged through the land leaving it little more than a pile of blackened brick and ashes soaked in blood. I went to Louvain, to Mons, and Charleroi, to Namur and Haecht and Aerschot in like manner, and in these places also I saw and heard such heart-breaking things. These acts were the result of the policy of "frightfulness" which the Germans had been taught thoroughly. After sufficient experience with this sort of thing and being sickened with it all, I finally turned my face back toward the north. CHAPTER XXX MY MENTAL PROCESSES Of course I did not know what was ahead of me, but I knew from the experiences which were back of me how I felt toward the Germans. I had gotten so that every time a German soldier passed me on the street with his arrogant and hardened attitude, I muttered the words, "The scourge," under my breath. I had seen the invariable results of his _Kultur_ and they had in every case been sordid and degrading. Henceforth I could not look upon him with anything else than contempt and hatred. The vandalism which I had seen and the terrible crimes that I had learned of, aroused in me something that I had not realized before. An anger such as seldom comes to men and such as I had not suspected my pacifist nature capable of, now seized hold of me. I vowed in my secret self that if I ever got out alive I would throw the weight of my small influence against that inhuman machine. The Good Book speaks of a "righteous indignation," and if ever there was such a thing in the heart of a human I believe it had possession of me then. Nor was it a momentary impulse. I had grimly and deliberately gone from place to place, day after day, for the purpose of collecting unbiased facts and impressions and these latter had taken their own course in my heart and brain. Of course I wrote nothing down. I made no attempt to get a single letter out of Belgium during all the time that I was there. I was afraid that it would get me into trouble when I came to leave. I kept no diary whatever. I needed none. All the things which I have related have been from memory, but these facts were so vividly burned into my soul that they will never be forgotten unless my faculty of memory be permanently destroyed. I did not write down the impressions which came to me, or the process of conversion which was constantly taking place within my being. I dared not commit these things to paper. I realized that I was in the hands of a powerful and terrible people who would show no mercy upon one who was not in sympathy with its aims and methods. Nevertheless, I swore that if I ever got free from them I would tell the world the facts and do everything within my power to thwart them and their purposes.