AN ENGLISHWOMAN IN ANTWERP.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 16225, 7 November 1914, Page 2

AN ENGLISHWOMAN IN ANTWERP.

(By Lootsk Mack, in the Daily Mail.)

Slowly, painfally, tri rough tho blazing summer day, ou-r long brown train goes creeping towards ''Anvers." Anvers! Tho name has grown into an emblem of hope in these sad days, when the Belgians are fleeing far their lives from their little homes ajtiang the flat green pastures, fleeing towards their own fortified city that we English know as Antwerp, or else directing their desperate, maddened flights to the ineffable peace and security of tho far-off and mysterious " Angleterre."

See them at every station crowding in ! In they crowd, herding like " dumb, driven cattle," and always the poor -white-faced women with their -wide, innocent eyes have babies in their arms and children tnnggnng at their shirts. Wherever we stop we find the platforms lined 10 deep, and by the wildness with which they fight their way into the already crowded carriages one knows the pent-up terror in these poor, simple hearts. They must get in, they must. Whatever they must get inside that train. And soon every com-partment-is packed, and on we go through the stifling, blinding August day, onwards towards Anvers.

Ah, but when a soldier comes along how eager everyone is to find a place for him. Not one of us but would gladly give our seat or our standing room to a " soldat," and when wounded soldiers from Malines appear at the doors we perform miracles in that long brown train. We squeeze ourselves to nothing. A soldier is talking. . . . How we listen! Never did divine or statesmaai get such a healing as that blue, worn-oiut wounded man, white with dust, clogged with mud, his yellow beard weeks old on his young face, with his poor feet in their broken, ravaged boots, and his red and blue 6a]) blackened with smoke and hardened with earth where he has slept among the beets and potatoes. "At Malines," he is telling us, in a faint voice at intervals, " I often saw the King. He was there. He was fighting. I saw him several times. I was quite neair him. He had a bravery magnificent, owr King. I saw a cannon exploding just a bare yard from where he was. Over and over again I saw his face, always calm and resolute. I hope all is well with him" .—he ends forlornly—"but in battle one knows nothing.'' " All is well." ory a dozen eagerr voices. "The King is back at Antwerp now. He is safe in, the palace, with the Queen and the little Princes." " ONLY SILENCE IS GREAT." Hour after hour goes by. Two hours' wait at Ghent, and we rush in a " voituire ' round the beautiful old city, finding everything quite calm here, and not a sign of the Germans anywhere. We entered the cathedral. It is Saturday morning, but crowds of people are there telling their rosaries. Then a priest begins a sermon., and I hear words that I am destined to hear again later on in Antwerp, words that have already begun to form the noble keynote to the Belgians' oHaractp.rs. Remember this • my children," says the little priest. " Setil le silence est grand; la reste est faiblesse. ("Only silence is great; •the j-est is weakness.") Antwerp at last, and the first we see of it is a bewildering mass of taxicabs arranged in the middle of wide green fields at the city's outskirts, for all taxis and motor cars have been commandeered by the Government at Antwerp. Near the taxis is a field of flying maclhines--biplanes, monoplanes, airships, a magnifioent array of aircraft, with the sunlight glittering over thorn. like silver. The Zeppelin caught them unawares the other night. Tlhey will never be caught like that again. In the field there goes on a ceaseless activity—they are always ready now, and always getting still more ready. Antwerp station is the seoond largest in the world, and in these days it has need to be big. The crowds that pour out of the trains are appalling. All the world seems to be coming into Antwerp. Soldiers are everywhere, armed to the hilt, and stern and implacable It is a temble affair to get into Antwerp. You wait and wait and wait, and at last you get to a soldier. You show your passport, and he reads it slowly—oh, so slowly—while two soldiers stand an each side of yon, their bayonets horribly near. " What are you ooming to Antwerp for? Where are you going? Where do you come from? Explain your presence." And explain you I roust, or never will you get into that inner line of bayonets that yet awaits you. Out of the station at last, safe through it all, famished, worn-out, but happy at ' having really arrived at one's goal! . . . Into the restaurant a crowd of priests come hurrying, their long, black robes flapping heavily, and soon they are begging for my Daily Mail that I bought at Ostend. They hang over the pictures of the British troops arriving in Ostend, presently looking irp I discover a exxrknas sight. One by one all that restaurantr—waiters, customers, managers, and all—have crept towards the priests' table and are craning their heads to catch a glimpse of what mean more to them than anyttag elsepictures—for bhey never have pictures in their papers, never amy pictures at all, and as many of them cannot read, these photographs are life to them. CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT. Antwerp is crowded. Her streete aire full wherever you go. Walled in all around with magnificent fortifications, she stands ready for the siege. Soldiers and gendarmes are everywhere. At every third step you, a>re called on to halt at the point of tibe bayonet. . How beautitul.Antwerp is! She has a glorious beauty all her own. In the golden blazing sunlight thousands of banners are floating in the wind, enormous banners, hanging out of those great white houses that stand in their magnificent avenues lined -with acacias, hanging out of all the shops and houses along the Chaussee de Malines, hanging even from the cathedral. Banners, banners, tenners. They are everywhere! Hour after hour one drives about, and always there are banners —gold, red, and black, floating everywhere. That black gives a curiously majestic if sombre look to the city. 1 confess I don't quite like it, and if I were a Belgian I would raise heaven and eatfth to have tho black taken out of my national flag. Night falls, a soft, warm, summer night, and in semi-darkness we dine at our hotel, with the waiters moving about like spectres. Then we go out into the streets again. It is 8 o'clock. The city has drawn down all its blinds, all its shutters. No lights barn in the streets. No lights show in the houses. All the cafes and restaurants are in darkness. Through the darkness, filled always with a shivering dread, people move about, too restless to remain within doors in this stifling August heat. And over all is'silence. In silence the guards stand before the big white royal palace, where faint lights are dim behind the heavily curtained windows on the ground floor. Soon the silence and the darkness, so poignant and significant grow too much for one's nerves, and the streets empty and we all go home to our haunted houses, too exhausted by our emotions to care much if the Zeppelin does come to-night. Early next morning, while the dew was fresh, I went to the outskirts of the city to look at the mined waters and armed trenches, but I was promptly held up. They leaned from each side of my carriage and demanded what I was doing there. The younger one—he was only a boy—looked very fierce, and tried a ruse. He spoke to me in German. I was just in time to save myself from replying in that fatal language. Then he pointed to the top of his bayonet. The older soldier frowned at hrrn and said, " No, no! Elle est Anglaise." But the boy looked very fierce. He was very young—l hope the Germans will never get him.