Speaking to one man about the Rubens "Descent from the Cross" still
hanging in the cathedral, I suggested that such a place was safe from
bombardment. He looked up at the lace-like old tower, whose chimes,
jangling down through leaping shafts and jets of Gothic stone, have so
long been Antwerp's voice. "They wouldn't stop a minute," he said.

All eastern Belgium was cut off. Brussels, to which people run over for
dinner and the theatre, might have been in China. Meanwhile Antwerp
seemed safe for the time and I returned to Ghent, got a train next day
as far south as Deynze, where the owner of a two-wheeled Belgian cart
was induced to take me another thirty kilometres on down to Courtrai.
It was rumored that there had been a battle at Courtrai--it was, at any
rate, close to the border and the German right wing and in the general
line of their advance.

We rattled along the hard highroad, paved with Belgian blocks, with a
well-pounded dirt path at the side for bicycles, between almost
uninterrupted rows of low houses and tiny fields in which men and women
both were working. Other carts like ours passed by, occasional heavy
wagons drawn by one of the handsome Belgian draft-horses, and now and
then a small loaded cart, owner perched on top, zipping along behind a
jolly Belgian work dog--pulling as if his soul depended on it and
apparently having the time of his life. Every one was busy, not a foot
of ground wasted; a more incongruous place into which to force the waste
and lawlessness of war it would be hard to imagine.

Past an old chateau, with its lake and pheasant-preserve; along the
River Lys, with its miles of flax, soaked in this peculiarly potent