coming, for a time at any rate. Private telegrams had long been stopped,
but an official thought he might be able to get mine through, so I sent
a long one asking that the nurses might not be sent till further notice.
As a matter of fact it never arrived, and the next afternoon I heard
that twenty-six nurses--instead of sixteen as was originally
arranged--were already on their way. There were 15,000 beds in Brussels
prepared for the reception of the wounded, and though there were not
many wounded in the city just then, the nurses would certainly all be
wanted soon if any of the rumours were true that we heard on all sides,
of heavy fighting in the neighbourhood, and severe losses inflicted on
the gallant little Belgian Army.

It was impossible to arrange for the nurses to go straight to their work
on arrival, so it was decided that they should go to a hotel for one
night and be drafted to their various posts the next day. Anyhow, they
could not arrive till the evening, so in the afternoon I went out to the
barriers to see what resistance had been made against the possible
German occupation of Brussels. It did not look very formidable--some
barbed-wire entanglements, a great many stones lying about, and the
Gardes Civiles in their quaint old-fashioned costume guarding various
points. That was all.

In due time my large family arrived and were installed at the hotel.
Then we heard, officially, that the Germans were quite near the city,
and that probably the train the nurses had come by would be the last to
get through, and this proved to be the case. _Affiches_ were pasted
everywhere on the walls with the Burgomaster's message to his people:

A SAD HOUR! THE GERMANS ARE AT OUR GATES!