The Log of a Noncombatant | Page 2

rank and nation.
Antwerp, the temporary capital of Belgium, was at this time invested, but not yet besieged, by the German army. On the south the city was already cut off by several regiments of the Ninth and Tenth German Army Corps under General von Boehn. The River Scheldt and the Dutch border formed a wall on the north and west. It was to Antwerp, therefore, that we determined to go. After listening to the usual flood of warnings against entering the fighting zone, and drinking our fill of stories of atrocity and hate which every refugee brought across the border into Holland, we took a couple of reefs in our baggage, and, hoisting our knapsacks, set our course for the temporary Belgian capital. By rail we traveled south across the level fields and lush green meadows of Holland, over bridges ready to be dynamited in case of invasion, and through training camps of the 450,000 Dutch soldiers then mobilized along the border. At a little town called Eschen the train stopped because the Belgians had torn up the tracks.
Seated on the cross-piece of a joggling two-wheeled ox cart, moving at the rate of not more than four miles an hour, with a dumb specimen for a driver, and a volume of Baedeker for interpreter and guide, we got our first glimpse of the hideous thing called war. Judging from the looks of the country and the burning villages, we were on the heels of a devastating army. For three, four, and five miles on either side of the road beautiful trees lay flat upon the ground. It was not until we saw groups of Belgian soldiers tearing down their own walls and hedges and applying match and gasolene to those which still stood, that we realized that this was a case of self-inflicted destruction. Farmhouses, stores, churches, old Belgian mansions, and windmills were either in flames or smouldering ruins. Where burning had not been sufficient, powder and dynamite had been applied to destroy landmarks which for centuries had been the country's pride. As far as the eye could reach the countryside was flattened to a desert. It reminded me of the Salem fire, through which, while the piles of debris were still smoking, I had been taken in the "Boston Journal's" car. But instead of a single town, here for twenty miles along lay stretched a smouldering waste. The devastation was for the defensive purpose of giving an unobstructed view to the cannon of Antwerp's outer fortifications, which on that side covered one sector of the circle swept by her enormous guns. I should hesitate to mention the millions of dollars of self-inflicted damage to Antwerp's suburbs alone. Luther and I did not at the time have the military password. So that first day was a specimen in the matter of hold-ups and arrests. From the time that we started across the level plains which approach the city until we got through the double sector of forts, we were stopped, questioned, and searched by thirteen different groups of soldiers. There were marry occasions where, after one pair of stupid sentries had put us through the grill, a second pair, watching from a distance of thirty yards or so, promptly repeated the entire performance. As these fellows spoke only Flemish dialect, our conversations were not particularly fluent. Frequently there gathered around us a crowd of gaping peasants, and when the word "Americaine" came out, there were "Oh's" and "Ah" of astonishment, or as often, when our explanations were not believed, sibilant hisses that shaped themselves into the menacing word "Spion." We had been led to believe that sooner or later a wool-witted sentry would shoot first and investigate later; but so far they had simply crossed bayonets, or with their hands up and palms outward had signaled us to halt.
Our experience that day, as later events proved, was not an extraordinary occurrence for war-time, especially for those endeavoring to gain entrance to an invested city. But as our first and maiden adventure it somewhat shook our nerve. When the grilling was over we felt about as guilty as any criminal who has been put through the third degree as practiced in the old police department days, and I had several times to look over my passport and letters of credentials to persuade myself that I was really not a spy. Eventually we were permitted to pass the gates of the Gare du Nord. Once inside the city gates, we made our way into the Place Verte and went directly to the Hotel St. Antoine, whose proprietor sent our names to police headquarters. The St. Antoine was at that time the residence of the diplomatic corps and the Belgian ministers of state, and was fifty yards from the Royal Palace and across