houses for post-offices. They wrote their names in chalk letters, giving
directions to relatives lost in the scramble.

After ox carts, rowboats, and river barges had done their share, a
Dutch-Belgian "Stoom Tram" joggled us along for a few miles. Some
more walking and a little running before I at last crawled aboard a
twenty-car freight and passenger train moving slowly toward the east.

At the first telegraph office across the Dutch border, I filed a cable
story to the "Boston Journal"; and later started an account for the
"New York Evening Post." I had an idea that I would score a "beat" or
"scoop" so that the people of the Back Bay could read of Antwerp's
fall over their coffee-cups the next morning. My cable account had too
much inside information. There were in it too many facts concerning
Winston Churchill's visit, also information about the number of Royal
Marines engaged, none of which it was thought proper to give out at
that time. So the English censor refused to let it through. That,
however, did not prevent the Dutch Cable Company from pocketing
my two hundred guilders.

By the time I reached Rotterdam the word "refugee" had assumed a
new and altogether nearer meaning. I had been in a besieged and
captured city; I had mixed with homeless and starving people; I had
seen houses crumble and burn; and ghastly human figures with their
insides oozing away and the eyes staring vacantly.

As I lay in bed that night I could hear, and I still can hear, the scruff,
scruff, and shuffle of feet as the compact body of this army--the
army without guns or leaders--dragged slowly past my window at
the Queen's, the tinkle of ox-cart bells, the talk and babble of guttural