“A bomb fell just in front of the railroad station, making a pit in the ground three ‘meters’ in diameter. The place was covered with stones, which were violently jerked out of the ground. The station is half-demolished. No one is there to be seen except the lifeless body of an elderly gentleman who, with his face to the ground, is stretched out on the floor of the waiting-room. “The beautiful buildings belonging to the Little Sisters of the Poor, and many other noted buildings have been totally destroyed. Thus it was in the few places which we have visited. What will it be in other places? All the streets through which we passed were covered with glass and stones. In all the city there is not a pane of glass which remains whole. All day long the Duffel highway was black with refugees, which makes us conclude that all Mechelen has taken flight.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XII. THE RESULTS OF WAR. Centuries ago, when Attila, known in history as the “Scourge of God,” led his army of Huns through the fertile fields of Europe, we read that he gazed upon the ruin which he had caused his soldiers to perpetrate on all sides, and cried out, “I am the hammer of the world, the grass grows no more where my horse has trod.” Well may these same words be applied to the armed forces now dominating the devastated plains and meadows of what was once peaceful Belgium. When one passes through the masses of falling debris and looks upon the remains of cities and villages which have stood for ages and in whose monuments and public buildings a more than human strength and beauty seemed enclosed, it appears that the Angel of Destruction has extended his deadly sceptre over the works of man and congealed those streams of life which once flowed through the streets now deserted and homes made desolate by the unheard-of ferocity of civilized man. When we try to estimate the amount of time, labor, wealth and industry required to build up these beautiful places, now stripped of their grandeur, devoid of life, and crumbling into dust, we become awestruck at sight of such desolation. The nothingness of the much-prized materialism becomes apparent in the ruins of man’s grandest achievements, and involuntarily we are moved to cry out, “Vanity of vanities! all is vanity,” which the evolutions of time can change into dust and ashes. Again the cruel hand of war is seen in the country homes, whose rustic beauty among the groves and green meadows so often aroused the spirit of song and fascinated the lover of Nature in his rambles. The churches whose cross-crowned spires, wherein the “Klokken” (chimes) so often pealed forth the call to prayer, are now abandoned, and their battered walls and broken windows look sadly down upon the deserted homesteads from which life has passed away.