BRAVE TO THE LAST.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 258, 4 December 1914, Page 8

BRAVE TO THE LAST.

ANTWERP BEFORE ITS FALL. A CITY WITHOUT NERVES. ["Daily Mail" Special.] ROTTERDAM, Sunday, October 11. The condition of Antwerp in these last few days before it came into German hands was the greatest example of sangfroid I have ever seen. Every day the. German advance crept a little nearer; the fate of the city, given the quantity and calibre of artillery defending it, was decided from the moment the Germans crossed the Nethe and held tneir positions. Yet the resistance went on steadily, and life in the city itself as steadily, too. ' Those who did leave the city left it quietly; there was little fuss. The Avenue de Kayser and the other great thoroughfares were daily filled with an unperturbed population that lunched in the cafes and looked at the open shops, and every, now and then listened to the sound of guns with the sort of attention one listens to an overture. To the very last the sight of a British sailor or a British marine was an occasion for cheers, even though those who cheered knew that there were not enough of our men, and, above all, not enough guns behind them. The pulse of the city beat to the last, and as for panics, I have seen more in Ostend, the home of panics, when a handful of Uhlans were vaguely somewhere in the neighbourhood of the town, for a week, than I ever saw in Antwerp with the enemy at the gates with his full force of arms. Only at jtright did the city suddenly, as it were, shiver and suck in its population and take on the stiff, the coffined., aspect of a beleaguered place. The lights went out, a few phantoms moved about the squares, sometimes the long streets stood stark in the moon. It was on a night like- this the bombardment commenced. Just after 12 with methodical precision the first hostile shell came into Antwerp.

The Portent. Not a prolonged noise, just a twirling whistle overhead, but a portent for all that. We went to the door of our hotel and looked out over the Place Verte, the little square beside the cathedral; it was dark and silent; some empty motor-cars stood in front with soldiers ready to crank them into life; the sky was clear enough, but not starry. Every now and then came the twirling half-whistle, half-hoot, and one listened a moment to hear the fall of the shell. Most often they passed beyond; now and then came a distant crumpling thud, and one knew that the missile had fallen nearer at hand. There is some uncertainty about the place of fall of the first shell; most say at Berchem; others that that which came down opposite the Queen's Hotel on the quay and resulted, as he told me, in the rapid removal from, exposure in the doorway of our "Daily Mail" photographer, was the first. Both came too. soon; it does not matter much. After this fashion the bombardment continued all night, A good many slept in the cellars; some brave souls waived fear, went back to their upper-floor rooms, got to bed, and defied death with a counterpane. I took a medium course, remaining on the ground floor, leaving the question of sleep, and every now and then going to the doorway and glimpsing the little transient vistas of hell as they flashed across the sky and fell and- made their inroads into civilisation. So it went on till 6 o'clock.

Then the firing slackened; daybreak came and the streets filled with people. There was a great crowd near the Central Station, and there were all the evidences of a hurried departure,-men and women carrying household goods and the like, but still there was no screaming or crying or panic—and yet for all anyone knew the bombardment might have recommenced any moment.

Stream of Exiles. I went to the headquarters of the General Staff, and there I was informed that the city was to be evacuated. Acting like a metropolitan policeman upon information received, a group of five of lis set out and joined the great stream of fugitives out of the city. As I have said, there was no panic, no pressing of one group on top of another, no wildness—but the sight of the stream of fugitives will remain with me for ever.

I "left ;Antwerp between-1# and 11 o 4 clselc. The exodus had been long in progress by "then. We made our way but in an interminable procession past the wharves of the city, where barge after barge lay close packed together, wharves stretching for miles, with many fine ships still at anchor beside them. It was pitiful to leave behind all these signs of maritime power. Ships are the furniture of the British Empire, and even in,the Belgian port, with the Belgian flag flying, we seemed to be leaving our most precious belonging behind us. But I presume a number must have escaped later. After we had gone past all the accumulated quays and docks our errant procession turned sharply to the right and made across a stretch of open country to the little village of Eeckeren. In the distance, a matter *of two miles away, was another stream of fugitives; we could see when after infinite plodding we should reach them and join and turn again and make for the village. And beyond Eeckeren the line went into woods and lengthened ont again beyond towards the distant frontier.

The frontier does not seem very far if you take a map and measure the distance. But on Thursday the frontier, was very far away. Think of the composition of the. fleeing multitude. ,It was a great city emptying itself; not only a great city, but all of a people who had been driven into that city by the steady shrinking ■ of their territory by the pushing onwards of the alien foe, till in that city was concentrated the free remainder of a free race, the remnant of their rule,' the survival of their own customs and the domination of their tongue. All these were going, all these were contained in the flood of waggons, of wheelbarrows, of carts, of slow-moving men and women; with that, last hundred thousand went the Flemish blood and the Flemish spirit; all its thriftiness and pride went into the wilderness, and even the Flemish language trekked away too, and with the morning or the next the sun over Antwerp would come up to "Hoclis!" and the lights would be lit in the city in the evening for the men who know how to kill. Bravely Borne Fate. Even without this mental conception the sorrows and unserves of the actual route w r ere terrible enough. The people plodding along bore their fate bravely; some of them even smiled or laughed at times; but most plodded on silently and hopelessly. There were great waggons crowded with thirty people; aged brow r n women buried, like shrunk walnuts, in masses of shawls; girls sitting listlessly on heaps of bedding; children

fitfully asleep, jogged and shaken and dust-covered; and innumerable babies crying with the bleating noise of lambs. And men plodding, plodding, plodding along. There were bicycles with great bundles slung on either side of them, and perhaps a child tied to the saddle, to be pushed by some patient father all the weary miles. There were piled perambulators, and men carrying chairs with women in them, and droves of cattle mingling with this, and the incessant noise of cyclists' bells—cyclists who rode a yard or two and dismounted and rode again and dismounted.; Sometimes the carts jammed together or the poor cattle bellowed and pushed up against some pitiful vehicle, |rearing and snorting, while the occupants cowered. Dogs were- everywhere. Every family seemed to have taken its companion with it. Some were under carts, some lusty ones strove to pull their own, others sat in the great waggons. I sawtwo good women carrying a. great bundle slung between them as darkness was falling, and out of the [bundle peeped the head of a pathetic, tired little wastrel of a dog. ;

The awful slowness of the'!''movement wore the soul out. Hundreds gave up and lay by the road or formed little camps under the trees. As night came on these were lit with fires, and as you came up out of the darkness and approached each fire you saw the tired people stretched beside it, and the dumb faces looking unregarclfully at the multitude still swaying into the dark beyond. . i Kindliness of the Dutch.; Many had food, but many had not. Those who had any: shared it i freely. But there were .some inexpressible scenes. I came after nightfull on a group of women, all clothed in! 'black, leaning humped together in the' centre of the roadway; they were moaiiing together in unison, like the Jews under the walls of Jerusalem, crying, I " Give us something to drink, something to drink." Their, request was satisfied, but there must have been many? such. Somehow, ,at long last, they came to the frontier, some of them; most of them took three days for the journey. The kindness of the Dutch to these poor people is beyond all conception. The Dutch soldiers carried the babies and mothered the children and supported the footsore, and fed them and gave them drink and threw open all their precious clean churches and public halls and houses to the poor, unkempt multitude. The railway station of Roosendaal is thick with dirt ; and broken food and rags; everywhere .there is misery; but the Dutch kindliness brightens it all. Every Dutchman now seems to have the kindliness sof a woman and the succouring strength of two men. At Hoogheheide I saw a kindly Dutch officer—let us keep his name, Captain Bussche—sitting almost in tears by the bedside of a woman who had given birth to a child during the night. He and his brother officers had all given money and food, and the private soldiers had surrendered \their own rations for the day. All through. Holland the same 'scenes are being enacted. There are 1,000,000 helpless refugees there ,at least. . The resources of the country can scarcely prevail. England will and must receive many. - As I pushed my /way on Thursday along the interminable line of tives, with the sjmoke of the,burning petrol tanks of-Antwerp rising .'.to the sky, and other smaller pyres when the homes of Berchem -were flaming, I thought,/'All,this| is,being endured for the sake of honour and for the c sake of England, too." So I trudged o-n and looked back again, and a fresh iburst of smoke rose from Antwerp, -a£ new holocaust, a new fire of-Cain offered to the Almighty by the: German. ~