inside the city gates, we made our way into the Place Verte and went
directly to the Hotel St. Antoine, whose proprietor sent our names to
police headquarters. The St. Antoine was at that time the residence
of the diplomatic corps and the Belgian ministers of state, and was
fifty yards from the Royal Palace and across the street from
headquarters of the Belgian General Staff.

There is no need of describing in detail Antwerp at the time of my first
visit. One or two pictures will suffice to give a rough idea of its
existence up to the time of the bombardment. Try to imagine, for
example, going about your business in New York or Boston or Los
Angeles (of course Antwerp is smaller than these) when your country,
a territory perhaps the size of the New England States, was already
two thirds overrun, burnt, smashed, and conquered by a hostile
nation, whose forces were now within nineteen miles of the gates of
the capital. Imagine that nation's warriors in the act of crushing your
tiny army, whose remnants were already exhausted and on the verge
of despair. Then picture a quaint, sleepy city, with shadowy alleys and
twisting, gabled streets, in which every other store and house was
decorated with King Albert's picture or draped in the red, black, and
yellow banner of the country-a city whose atmosphere was charged
with fear and suspicion and excitement. Sometimes a crowd of a
thousand or two drew one toward the Central Station where
bedraggled refugee families, just arrived from Liege, Termonde,
Aerschot, and Malines, stood on street corner or wagon top and
thrilled the crowd with tales of atrocities and the story of their flight
from their burning homes to the south. Now and then the crowd
parted before the clanging bell of a Red Cross ambulance rushing its
load of bleeding bodies to the hospitals along the Place de Meir.
Nurses, male or female, clung to the ambulance steps. The first one I