It is not in the ruined towns or the battered cathedrals of Belgium that
one sees most clearly the wholehearted way in which the German
soldiers have carried out the commands of their lord and made his
desires their own. Louvain, Termonde, Dinant, and a hundred other
towns have been uprooted by order. If you wish to see what the
German soldier can do for love, you have to visit the chateaux which
are dotted so thickly all over the Belgian countryside. Here he has
had a free hand, and the destruction he1 wrought had no political
object and served no mere utilitarian purpose. It was the work of pure
affection, and it showed Germany at her best. One would like to have
brought one of those chateaux over to England, to be kept for all time
as an example of German culture, that our children might turn from it
in horror, and that our country might be saved from the hypocrisy and
the selfishness of which this is the fruit.

Among our many good friends in Antwerp there were few whom we
valued more than the Baron d'O. He was always ready to undertake
any service for us, from the most difficult to the most trivial. A man of
birth and of fortune, he stood high in the service of the Belgian
Government, and he was often able to do much to facilitate our
arrangements with them. So when he asked us to take him out in one
of our cars to see the chateau of one of his greatest friends, we were
glad to be in a position to repay him in a small way for his kindness.
The chateau had been occupied by the Germans, who had now
retired--though only temporarily, alas!--and he was anxious to see
what damage had been done and to make arrangements for putting it
in order again if it should be possible.

A perfect autumn afternoon found us tearing southwards on the road
to Boom in Mrs. W.'s powerful Minerva. We were going to a point