fy him. Consul-General Diederich returned to
Antwerp on Monday and I left the same day for the nearest
telegraph station in Holland.

The whole proceeding was irregular and unauthorized, of course,
but for that matter so was the German invasion of Belgium. In any
event, it seemed the thing to do and I did it, and, under the same
circumstances I should do precisely the same thing over again.

Though a very large force of German troops passed through
Antwerp during the whole of Friday night in pursuit of the retreating
Belgians, the triumphal entry of the victors did not begin until
Saturday afternoon, when sixty thousand men passed in review
before the military governor, Admiral von Schroeder, and General
von Beseler, who, surrounded by a glittering staff, sat their horses in
front of the royal palace. So far as onlookers were concerned, the
Germans might as well have marched through the streets of ruined
Babylon. Thompson and I, standing in the windows of the American
Consulate, were the only spectators in the entire length of the mile-
long Place de Meir--which is the Piccadilly of Antwerp--of the great
military pageant. The streets were absolutely deserted; every
building was dark, every window shuttered; in a thoroughfare which
had blossomed with bunting a few days before, not a flag was to be
seen. I think that even the Germans were a little awed by the
deathly silence that greeted them. As Thompson drily remarked, "It
reminds me of a circus that's come to town the day before it's
expected."

For five hours that mighty host poured through the canons of brick
and stone:

Above the bugle's din,
Sweating beneath their haversacks,
With rifles bristling on their backs,
The dusty men trooped in.

Company after company, regiment after regiment, brigade after
brigade swept by until our eyes grew weary with watching the ranks
of grey under the slanting lines of steel. As they marched they sang,
the high buildings along the Place de Meir and the Avenue de
Keyser echoing to their voices thundering out "Die Wacht Am
Rhein," "Deutschland, Deutschland Uber Alles" and "Ein Feste Burg
ist Unser Gott." Though the singing was mechanical, like the faces
of the men who sang, the mighty volume of sound, punctuated at
regular intervals by the shrill music of the fifes and the rattle of the
drums, and accompanied always by the tramp, tramp, tramp of iron-
shod boots, was one of the most impressive things that I have ever
heard.