A German Attack upon Antuerp 221 Allied retreat, recalling how near Sir John French's Army was to destruction at Cambrai, at St. Quen- tin, is it too much to say that the Belgian contribu- tion to the Allied cause was here vital — decisive? Like Wellington's army, holding French masses in Spain and Portugal, when Napoleon was in fact fighting for his life in Eastern Germany, the Bel- gians were reducing German strength before Paris at the crucial hour in the great invasion. More than this, it should be recalled that when von Kluck began his rapid retreat from the Marne the German General Staff attempted to despatch two army corps from Belgium to his aid. Instantly the Belgians sallied forth from Antwerp, came down almost to the gates of Brussels, compelled the recall of the two corps and delayed the reenforcement of von Kluck for days, necessitating an ultimate weak- ening of the Alsace-Lorraine armies. To the disastrous effect of this resistance it is nat- ural and doubtless correct to trace much of the bad conduct of Germans in Belgium. France was an ex- pected opponent. Toward French cities and towns captured the Germans had displayed no such feroc- ity as the Belgian incidents revealed. All through the campaign there was unmistakably a growing rage at the presumption of the little State, not merely in making a resistance, but in crippling German ar- mies at the moment when a tremendous triumph was almost in their hands. What Napoleon attempted to do in Spain it now