ping off the straw cover I struck a match to see the result of my
maiden attempt at looting. I didn't particularly care whether it was
wine or brandy. Either would have tasted good. It was neither. It was
a bottle of pepsin bitters!

At daybreak we started at full speed down the river for Doel, where
we had left the car, as it was imperative that I should get to the end
of a telegraph wire, file my dispatches, and get back to the city.
They told me at Doel that the nearest telegraph office was at a little
place called L'Ecluse, on the Dutch frontier, ten miles away. We
were assured that there was a good road all the way and that we
could get there and back in an hour. So we could have in ordinary
times, but these were extraordinary times and the Belgians, in order
to make things as unpleasant as possible for the Germans, had
opened the dykes and had begun to inundate the country. When we
were about half-way to L'Ecluse, therefore, we found our way barred
by a miniature river and no means of crossing it. It was in such
circumstances that Roos was invaluable. Collecting a force of
peasants, he set them to work chopping down trees and with these
trees we built a bridge sufficiently strong to support the weight of the
car. Thus we came into L'Ecluse.

But when the stolid Dutchman in charge of the telegraph office saw
my dispatches he shrugged his shoulders discouragingly. "It is not
possible to send them from here," he explained. "We have no
instrument here but have to telephone everything to Hulst, eight
miles away. As I do not understand English it would be impossible to
telephone your dispatches." There seemed nothing for it but to walk
to Hulst and back again, for the Dutch officials refused to permit me
to take the car, which was a military one, across the frontier. Just at
that moment a young Belgian priest--Heaven bless him!--who had
overheard the discussion, approached me. "If you will permit me,
monsieur," said he, "I will be glad to take your dispatches through to
Hulst myself. I understand their importance. And it is well that the
people in England and in America should learn what is happening
here in Belgium and how bitterly we need their aid." Those
dispatches were, I believe, the only ones to come out of Antwerp
during the bombardment. The fact that the newspaper readers in
London and New York and San Francisco were enabled to learn
within a few hours of what had happened in the great city on the
Scheldt wa