A French hat and a French suit of clothes, I think, were alone responsible for my success in passing through the city gate. Two military automobiles were stopped and forced to show their credentials, but I strolled through unmolested. Once outside, the reservists guarding the various barricades let me pass as soon as I showed them my passport vised in Dunkirk. I was stopped many times, too, trying each time not to give an appearance of too great interest in the works of defence being built all around me. [Sidenote: Sand-dune barricades.] Even though this cannot be published for some time I do not feel free to tell what these defences were. I have no doubt there are complete descriptions of these works in the hands of the German army, their spy system is so thorough, but I would not care to have any military secrets escape through anything I write. I think I can go so far as to say, though, that I received a liberal education in how to barricade sand-dunes and low-lying fields. Ten miles out of Dunkirk I was surprised to see a civilian on a bicycle, as civilians were no longer permitted to go near the theatre of war on bicycles, a precaution taken against spies. As he approached I recognized Mr. J. Obels, the Belgian correspondent of the Chicago _Daily News_, whom I had last seen under arrest near Brussels when the German army first passed through Belgium. He told me he had been kept in prison seventeen days by the German military governor of Brussels, but, once released, was given every possible kind of pass. I was relieved to see him alive and free. As Obels left me to continue his journey to Dunkirk and on to London to deliver his own "copy," he advised me to go directly to Furnes, the most considerable town in what was left of Belgium, and have my passport vised again. So I continued down the long, flat highway, bordered on both sides by sunken fields, toward the cannonading I could now hear ahead. The road had been fairly full of automobiles, motor-trucks, motorcycles, and bicycles over its whole length, but it became crowded now with the addition of a long string of Parisian motor-buses taking several infantry regiments forward. A whole artillery division of yellow French "Schneiders" also took up its share of the wide road, and at the barricades there were traffic blockades lasting at times for ten minutes. [Sidenote: The road to Furnes.]