flag, unlike every other town that the Germans had occupied, had floated
bravely from nearly every house in Brussels. M. Max had issued a
proclamation encouraging the use of it early in the war. Now this was
forbidden as it was considered an insult to the Germans. Even the Red
Cross flag was forbidden except on the German military hospitals, and I
thought Brussels looked indeed a melancholy city as we came in from
Charleroi that morning in torrents of rain in the Red Cross car.

My first business was to go round and visit all my nurses. I found most
of them very unhappy because they had no work. All the patients had been
removed from the fire-station hospital and nearly all the private
hospitals and ambulances were empty too. It was said that Germans would
rather have all their wounded die than be looked after by Englishwomen,
and there were dreadful stories afloat which I cannot think any German
believed, of English nurses putting out the eyes of the German wounded.
Altogether there were a good many English Sisters and doctors in
Brussels--three contingents sent out by the Order of St. John of
Jerusalem, to which we belonged, a large unit sent by the British Red
Cross Society, and a good many sent out privately. It certainly was not
worth while for more than a hundred English nurses to remain idle in
Brussels, and the only thing to do now was to get them back to England
as soon as possible. In the meantime a few of them took the law into
their own hands, and slipped away without a passport, and got back to
England safely by unofficial means.

The second afternoon I was in Brussels I received a note from one of my
nurses who had been sent to Tirlemont in my absence by the Belgian Red
Cross Society. The contents of the note made me very anxious about her,
and I determined to go and see her if possible. I had some Belgian
acquaintances who had come from that direction a few days before, and I