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TO BELGIUM 205
Eisenhahnhrucke (war railway bridge), where we get a view of
the remains of the old permanent bridges which were blown
up during the first days of the war, and presently we enter
the delightful and prettily situated little town of Namur.
In order to get the information I needed, I applied to a
Captain, a tall man with snow-white hair and beard, no less
a person than professor emeritus Doctor B. Lepsius, who in
spite of his age has gone out to the war. He is a great friend
of Professor Svante Arrhenius, and looked after me like a
father during my short stay in Namur.
After my baggage had been stowed away at an hotel by the
railway station, we paid a short visit to the Governor, General
von Hirschberg, who had no objection to letting me see one
of the forts of the fortress. As companion I had, besides
Professor Lepsius, Major Hans Friederich, of the General Staff.
We drove to the northern fortifications and soon arrived
at Fort Marchovelette, now called fort No. i. Namur is, or
rather was, surrounded by nine forts. In the Belgian days
they were known by definite names, now they are merely
numbered. The first impression that one gets of No. i is that
the destruction has been less complete than in the Port Arthur
fort where General Kondratenko was killed during the
Japanese siege in 1904. I had an opportunity to visit that
" eagle’s nest " exactly six years ago. It looked like a huge
pile of broken stones and rubbish. But on closer examination
of No. I, one is astounded at the appalling effect of the fire
from the German heavy artillery. The fort is triangular with
one apex towards the north-east. Its glacis is covered with
barbed wire-netting stretched out to a height of one metre
between the iron posts driven vertically into the clay-bound
soil. The netting is close, and covers a belt of thirty or forty
metres. Inside is the moat, commanded by the fire from
galleries in the counterscarp. At length we reach the heart
of the fort with casemates for the garrison, armoured turrets
for artillery, searchlights and fire control, and an infantry
rampart like a belt round the grey cupolas on the summit.
Ten to fifteen metres away, outside the barbed-wire zone,
I noticed in the ground the crater of a 42-cm. shell, 30 metres
in circumference and about 8 metres deep. On the almost
vertical concrete walls of the scarp and counterscarp I saw
the marks of shells of more normal dimensions—streaky scars
radiating from the point of impact. Splinters of shells of
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