-muzzle
against his breast while another sentry, by means of a dark lantern,
scrutinized his papers. Save for the sentries, the streets were
deserted, for, as the places of amusement and the eating-places and
drinking-places were closed, there was no place for the people to
go except to bed. I was reminded of the man who told his wife that
he came home because all the other places were closed.

I have heard it said that Antwerp was indifferent to its fate, but it
made no such impression on me. Never have I lived in such an
atmosphere of gloom and depression. Except around the St.
Antoine at the lunch and dinner-hours and in the cafes just before
nightfall did one see anything which was even a second cousin to
jollity. The people did not smile. They went about with grave and
anxious faces. In fact, outside of the places I have mentioned, one
rarely heard a laugh. The people who sat at the round iron tables on
the sidewalks in front of the cafes drinking their light wines and beer
--no spirits were permitted to be sold--sat in silence and with solemn
faces. God knows, there was little enough for them to smile about.
Their nation was being slowly strangled. Three-quarters of its soil
was under the heel of the invader. An alien flag, a hated flag, flew
over their capital. Their King and their Government were fugitives,
moving from place to place as a vagrant moves on at the approach
of a policeman. Men who, a month before, were prosperous
shopkeepers and tradesmen were virtual bankrupts, not knowing
where the next hundred-franc note was coming from. Other men
had seen their little flower-surrounded homes in the suburbs razed
to the ground that an approaching enemy might find no cover.
Though the shops were open, they had no customers for the people
had no money, or, if they had money they were hoarding it against
the days when they might be homeless fugitives. No, there was not
very much to smile about in Antwerp.

There were amusing incidents, of course. If one recognizes humour
when he sees it he can find it in almost any situation. After the first
Zeppelin attack the management of the St. Antoine fitted up
bedrooms in the cellars.

A century or more ago the St. Antoine was not a hotel but a
monastery, and its cellars are all that the cellars of a monastery
ought to be--thick-walled and damp and musty. Yet these
subterranean suites were in as great demand among the
diplomatists as are tables in the palm-room of the S