ht a long string of
callers, and between times we took satisfying looks at the passing
troops, which have been pouring into town steadily yesterday and to-day.
Nobody has established to my satisfaction whence they come or whither
they are going. There are all sorts of explanations offered, each
explanation being quite convincing to the one who offers it. Most people
say that they are being brought in for the siege of Antwerp, which is
about to begin. The siege of Antwerp has begun so often and never
materialized that I decline to get excited about it at this stage of the
game. Another explanation is that the German retreat in France is so
precipitate that some of the troops and supply trains are already
pouring through here on their way home. I cannot get up much enthusiasm
for that either. Some imaginative souls maintain that these are forces
being brought back to fight against the Russians. None of these stories
sound good to me and I have resigned myself to the belief that the only
really safe conjecture is that this "is a movement of troops."

This morning Baron von der Lancken came in and asked me to testify as to
what we had seen at Louvain. Of course what we saw had no bearing on the
original cause of the trouble and there is no reason for me to push my
way into the controversy. Besides, I can't do it without orders from
Washington.

We are getting quite accustomed to having no communications with the
outside world. Railroads, of course, have ceased to work, except for
military purposes, and there is no way for the general public to get
about. There has been no postal service since the Germans marched in on
August 20th, and we don't know when we shall have any. All telephones
were cut off within a few hours of the arrival of the German army. There
are no newspapers, and all the information we are supposed to have about
happenings in the outside world is fed to us in the form of placards on
the walls of the city. Nobody takes any great amount of stock in what
these placards tell us, although they have sometimes told us the truth,
and consequently there is a great demand for the few copies of Dutch and
English newspapers that are smuggled across the border and brought to
Brussels. The prices vary according to the number of papers to be had,
and run from five francs to one hundred francs for a single copy of the
_Times_. Those who do not care to spend so much can rent a paper by the
hour--and customers are not want