"They have been told that to make them fight more savagely," was the comment. "What about the official German order for a campaign of 'frightfulness' in Belgium?" And here, even while the car is crawling along toward the trenches, perhaps it is allowable to explain the word "frightfulness," which now so permeates the literature of the war. Following the scenes of the German invasion into Belgium, where here and there some maddened civilian fired on the German troops and precipitated the deaths of his townsmen,[C] Berlin issued, on August twenty-seventh, a declaration, of which this paragraph is a part: [Footnote C: The Belgians contend that, in almost every case, such firing by civilians was the result of attack on their women.] "The only means of preventing surprise attacks from the civil population has been to interfere with unrelenting severity and to create examples which, by their frightfulness, would be a warning to the whole country." A Belgian officer once quoted it to me, with a comment. "This is not an order to the army. It is an attempt at justification for the very acts which Berlin is now attempting to deny!" That is how "frightfulness" came into the literature of the war. Captain F---- stopped the car. Near the road was a ruin of an old church. "In that church," he said, "our soldiers were sleeping when the Germans, evidently informed by a spy, began to shell it. The first shot smashed that house there, twenty-five yards away; the second shot came through the roof and struck one of the supporting pillars, bringing the roof down. Forty-six men were killed and one hundred and nine wounded." He showed me the grave from a window of the car, a great grave in front of the church, with a wooden cross on it. It was too dark to read the inscription, but he told me what it said: "Here lie forty-six _chasseurs_." Beneath are the names, one below the other in two columns, and underneath all: "_Morts pour la Patrie_." We continued to advance. Our lamps were out, but the _fusées_ made progress easy. And there was the moon. We had left behind us the lines of the silent men. The scene was empty, desolate. Suddenly we stopped by a low brick house, a one-story building with overhanging eaves. Sentries with carbines stood under the eaves, flattened against the wall for shelter from the biting wind. CHAPTER XI AT THE HOUSE OF THE BARRIER A narrow path led up to the house. It was flanked on both sides by barbed wire, and progress through it was slow. The wind caught my rain cape and tore it against the barbs. I had to be disentangled. The sentries saluted, and the low door, through which the officers were obliged to stoop to enter, was opened by an orderly from within. We entered The House of the Mill of Saint ----.