had been caged in there a few hours more than I was, in my
nervous tension I probably would have vented my sense of
outraged justice by assaulting one of the officers myself. I wouldn't
have had a long time then to speculate upon the immortality of the
soul. I would have possessed first-hand information. One can
understand why, for their own protection, the Germans imposed
their iron laws upon the Belgians with their terrible penalties. What
is hard to understand is the long-suffering patience and self-
restraint of the Belgians. Occasionally some high-spirited or high-
strung fellow was no longer able to keep the lid on the volcano of
hatred and rage seething within him. This blowup brought down,
not only upon his own head, but upon the whole community, the
most hideous reprisals.

By the time my writing was completed the men were pretty well
settled down for the night. On the outside the roaring of the
Austrian guns, which for days had been bombarding their way into
Antwerp, now became less constant; less and less frequently the
hoarse commands of the officers, mingled with the rumbling of the
automobiles, came up from the courtyard below. At midnight the
only sounds were the groans and moans of the twisting sleepers
and the measured tread of the sentry as he paced up and down
the hall, his silhouette darkening at regular intervals the glass door
at the end of our little room.

I was placed in a. sort of adjoining closet with six others. A motley
mixture indeed; a Russian, an American, four Belgians, and a
German--all prisoners awaiting our sentences. As a last move, the
German soldier guards sandwiched themselves into the open
spaces on the floor, their long bayonets glistening in the electric