By this time we were slowly starving on our feet, we were wet through continuously, and such sleep as we got was broken and fitful. Before we had been four days out we were reduced to gaunt, tattered, dirty scarecrows. We staggered as we walked and sometimes one of us would drop on the road through sheer weakness. Through it all we kept up our frenzy for speed and it was surprising how much ground we forced ourselves to cover in a night. And, no matter how much the pangs of hunger gnawed at us, we conserved our fast dwindling supply of biscuit. Less than two biscuits a day was our limit! Finally we reached a point that I recognized from my previous attempt to escape. It was about four miles from the border. We had two biscuits left between us. The next day we feasted royally and extravagantly on those two biscuits. No longer did we need to hoard our supplies, for the next night would tell the tale. [Sidenote: Safe past the German sentries.] By the greatest good fortune night came on dark and cloudy. Not a star showed in the sky. We crawled cautiously and painfully toward the border. At every sound we stopped and flattened out. Twice we saw sentries close at hand, but both times we got by safely. Finally we reached what we judged must be the last line of sentries. We had crawled across a ploughed field and reached a road lined on both sides with trees where sentries were passing up and down. "It's the border!" we whispered. When the nearest sentry had reached the far end of his beat we doubled up like jack-knives and dashed across that road, plunging through the trees on the other side. Not a sound came from the sentries. We struck across fields with delirious speed, we reeled along like drunken men, laughing and gasping and sometimes reaching out for a mutual handshake. [Sidenote: Across the border in Holland.] Then we got a final scare. Marching up the road toward us was what looked like a white sheet. Our nerves were badly shattered, and that moving thing froze my blood, but it was a scare of brief duration. The sheet soon resolved itself into two girls in white dresses, walking up the road with a man. We scurried to the side of the road as soon as we made them out. Then I decided to test the matter of our whereabouts and stepped out to accost them. "Have you a match?" I asked in German. The man did not understand me! We were in Holland--_and free_! * * * * * Little was heard from the Belgians themselves of the hardships and suffering endured by them under the rule of the Germans. Occasionally, however, an eye-witness from the outside was able to present some aspects of the terrible picture. The narrative of such an eye-witness is given in the following pages. UNDER GERMAN RULE IN FRANCE AND BELGIUM J. P. WHITAKER [Sidenote: The German iron heel on Roubaix.]