inuous fighting, were at the point of exhaustion; the hospitals
were swamped by the streams of wounded which for days past had
been pouring in; over the city hung a cloud of despondency and
gloom, for the people, though kept in complete ignorance of the true
state of affairs, seemed oppressed with a sense of impending
disaster.

When I returned that evening to the Hotel St. Antoine from the
battle-front, which was then barely half a dozen miles outside the
city, the manager stopped me as I was entering the lift.

"Are you leaving with the others, Mr. Powell?" he whispered.

"Leaving for where? With what others?" I asked sharply.

"Hadn't you heard?" he answered in some confusion. "The
members of the Government and the Diplomatic Corps are leaving
for Ostend by special steamer at seven in the morning. It has just
been decided at a Cabinet meeting. But don't mention it to a soul.
No one is to know it until they are safely gone."

I remember that as I continued to my room the corridors smelled of
smoke, and upon inquiring its cause I learned that the British
Minister, Sir Francis Villiers, and his secretaries were burning papers
in the rooms occupied by the British Legation. The Russian Minister,
who was superintending the packing of his trunks in the hall,
stopped me to say good-bye. Imagine my surprise, then, upon
going down to breakfast the following morning, to meet Count
Goblet d'Alviella, the Vice-President of the Senate and a minister of
State, leaving the dining-room.

"Why, Count!" I exclaimed, "I had supposed that you were well on
your way to Ostend by this time."

"We had expected to be," explained the venerable statesman, "but
at four o'clock this morning the British Minister sent us word that Mr.
Winston Churchill had started for Antwerp and asking us to wait and
hear what he has to say."

At one o'clock that afternoon a big drab-coloured touring-car filled
with British naval officers tore up the Place de Meir, its horn
sounding a hoarse warning, took the turn into the narrow Marche
aux Souliers on two wheels, and drew up in front of the hotel. Before
the car had fairly come to a stop the door of the tonneau was thrown
violently open and out jumped a smooth-faced, sandy-haired, stoop-
shouldered, youthful-looking man in the undress Trinity House
uniform. There was no mistaking who it was. It was the Right Hon.
Winston Churchill. As he darted into the crowded lobby, which, as
usual at the luncheon-ho