axis, no telephones. Milk is no longer
to be had, and within a day or two we shall have no butter or eggs. Then
it will begin to look like a real siege. In a day or so I am to have a
list of Jarotzky's demands for supplies, so that I can cheer myself with
thoughts of what our life is to be like.

There is bad news from Louvain. The reports we have received agree that
there was some sort of trouble in the square before the Hotel de Ville a
day or two ago. Beyond that, no two reports are alike. The Germans say
that the son of the Burgomaster shot down some staff officers who were
talking together at dusk before the Hotel de Ville. The only flaw in
that story is that the Burgomaster has no son. Some Belgians say that
two bodies of Germans who were drunk met in the dusk; that one body
mistook the other for French, and opened fire. Other reliable people
tell with convincing detail that the trouble was planned and started by
the Germans in cold blood. However that may be, the affair ended in the
town being set on fire, and civilians shot down in the streets as they
tried to escape. According to the Germans themselves, the town is being
wiped out of existence. The Cathedral, the Library, the University, and
other public buildings have either been destroyed or have suffered
severely. People have been shot by hundreds, and those not killed are
being driven from the town. They are coming to Brussels by thousands,
and the end is not yet. This evening the wife of the Minister of Fine
Arts came in with the news that her mother, a woman of eighty-four, had
been driven from her home at the point of the bayonet and forced to walk
with a stream of refugees all the way to Tervueren, a distance of about
twelve miles, before she could be put on a tram to her daughter's house.
Two old priests have staggered into the ---- Legation more dead than
alive after having been compelled to walk ahead of the German troops for
miles as a sort of protecting screen. One of them is ill, and it is said
that he may die as a result of what he has gone through.

* * * * *

_August 28th._--After lunch Blount and I decided to go out to Louvain to
learn for ourselves just how much truth there is in the stories we have
heard, and see whether the American College is safe. We were going
alone, but Pousette and Bulle, the Swedish and Mexican Charges
d'Affaires, were anxious to join us, so the four of us got away t