Liege Resists 65 could bring up troops from Brussels and Antwerp, sixty and seventy miles away. When Liege fell, if it did, there was no other obstacle to a quick raid across the open country to the Belgian capital. Bel- gian railroads could be destroyed, Belgian mobiliza- tion prevented and the Belgian defence thrown back to Antwerp, the only remaining fortified place in northern Belgium. Such a raid would interrupt any scheme to put the British " expeditionary army " on the Ger- man flank, the destruction of the railways would greatly increase the time necessary for its arrival, and leave the Germans several weeks in which to pursue their invasion of France without fear of seri- ous molestation from their right flank. They would also be able to utilize the trunk line from Cologne to Paris from the Rhine to the French frontier. All despatches that came in at this time indicated that the German determination to possess Liege re- mained unshaken and any pause was to permit the bringing up of siege artillery and supports. The desperate fighting of the first forty-eight hours must also have exhausted the ammunition of the forces engaged as well as severely taxed the endurance of the attacking divisions. The more carefully the strategic relation of Liege to the German advance is studied the more clearly it must be recognized that an ultimate failure to take it would have jeopardized the whole plan of ad- vance through Belgium. Liege captured Huy and