understanding that the business was strictly confidential and that no
other citizens or suspects were to know of it, he gave us a permit for
the military trains. It had been the intention of the War Office to
pack us under guard with the herds on one of those Government refugee
trains. But to live and sleep with the soldiers as we were now to do,
to see their marches, to absorb their uninformed and boastful talk, to
study their guns, munitions, and equipment, was better than our highest
hopes.

"You have to do a lot of quick transporting?" I asked before saying
good-bye to Major von W------.

"Yes," was the answer. "They 're at us from all sides. Some of the
men we are now transporting have been under fire in two countries,
and now they will see service in a third." He knew that I had come
from Ghent and from Antwerp, which the Germans were about to
bombard, yet, to his credit, it should be said that he did not ask for
information of Belgian activities. Similarly, although the soldiers, as a
rule, and one man high in the civil government of Brussels, asked
what was going on in Antwerp, it was noticeable that German officers
recognized the obligations of neutrality.

Of how we left Brussels and of the first part of the eastward trip, I am
going to quote from the jottings in the log-book, which was written up
at some length after we left Aix-la-Chapelle:--

"Early on the morning of the 22d, I went up to Consul Watts's office to
get the mail pouch I had promised him to carry. Luther and I then
boarded a trolley car going northwest past the Gare du Nord and on
to Schaerbeek, a junction on the outskirts of Brussels. Although the