THE LAST TO LEAVE.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume II, Issue 366, 13 April 1915, Page 4

THE LAST TO LEAVE.

LOUISE MACK AT ANTWERP. Three achievements alone Avere sufficient to stamp the hall mark of success on Louise Mack's work as a Avar correspondent in Belgium. She got into Brussels without a passport, and spent three days in the capital while it was under German rule; faced the bombardment of Antwerp, and stayed on to record the entry of the invaders, when a million of the citizens had fled. She was the last war correspondent to leave the city, but she had several adA*entures before she got clear of the Germans. - "I ran the biggest risk going to Brussels," said the novelist, in the course of a chat to a representative of the "British-Australasian," "but it Avas at Antwerp that suspicion fell on me at last. ' She's English,' said a German who saAV me in a Belgian costume, cleaning glasses behind the bar. After that I had to be hidden away. I was put in a little room and left there for hours, [ ' ! and so it went on for a few days. One [ morning the landlady appeared with a man and two little children. She gave ;me a peasant's dress to put on, and told me that I would have to get away as the wife, and the tAvo youngsters were to be the temporary children. So we left the hotel and walked down the street, the man holding one child and I the other. 'What's your name?' I asked the man. 'Francois/ he said. 'What is your'si' 'lf it is necessary, call me Louisa.' "He took me to an hotel kept by the mother of the two children, and I lived in the kitchen for a time. Later with a Mr and Mrs Carte, who Avere refugees from Lierre out of Antwerp, I stayed in one of the deserted mansions in the city. It was through these friends I got out at last. Mrs Carte had got a passport for herself and her husband to visit her people in Holland. I was not unlike her as far as her photo on the passport Avas concerned, and on the strength of this resemblance her husband Avas able to get me across the frontier. "My last trip to the front," she continued, "was under more congenial circumstances. Going over to Dunkirk, who should I meet but Lord Northcliffe, Avho said he Avas so pleased with the Avork I had done in Belgium for the 'Evening News' that I could have the use of his car, and so for three days he droA*e hither .and thither, as I directed him."

AVlien tin 1 mail left England Miss Louise Mack, who in private life is Mrs Creed, expected to leave for Australia on her lecturing tour in about a month's time. She will start in Sydney, where she commenced her career as the writer of the woman's letter in the ''Bulletin."