Page 84 - A Hero of Liége

as they descended; but Kenneth had been able barely to distinguish them
while in the air, and when he came to the ground they were quite out of

sight.

But the intervening space had been carefully prepared for infantry.
Trenches had been dug, barbed wire entanglements stretched from point to
point, every natural feature adapted to the purposes of defence. At the

present moment the trenches were not manned. Pariset learnt from a
comrade in the flying corps that though the armistice had been refused, the

Germans had not as yet renewed the attack. Their losses on the previous
day had been very heavy, and the garrison were confident of their ability to
repulse any further assaults if the Germans persisted in attacking in the

same dense masses, and were not supported by heavier artillery than that
which they had employed hitherto.

Kenneth listened eagerly to the conversation between the two airmen. He
learnt how the German infantry, covered by artillery, had advanced again

and again in close formation, only to be hurled back by the fire from the
forts and the trenches, followed up with the bayonet. The Belgians were

amazed at the doggedness with which their enemy had pressed on, careless
of cover, though great gaps were torn in their packed columns. Such a
wastage of men pointed to a vast confidence in the ultimate superiority of

numbers, the crushing of the defence by sheer weight rather than skill.

Pariset explained, when Kenneth questioned him, the importance to the
enemy of the capture of Liege. Encircled by its twelve forts, constructed by
the engineering genius of General Brialmont, the town stood as a

formidable obstacle to the advance of the Germans through the valley of
the Meuse, the easiest way into France. Every day it could be held was a

day's delay in the prosecution of the enemy's plan of campaign, which, as
everybody knew, was to crush France before Russia had time to threaten
Germany on her eastern border.

"The Germans have, they think, a very perfect military machine," Pariset

continued; "I daresay they have, though perhaps they are a little too
cocksure about it. They've had no experience of war for forty years, and