ss to Antwerp if I could from there and work my
way back to Brussels in private clothes.

I scrambled up somehow the next day, and found a very large party
assembled outside the Gare du Nord, as every single English nurse and
doctor in Brussels was to be expelled. There must have been fifteen or
twenty doctors and dressers altogether, and more than a hundred Sisters
and nurses.

A squad of German soldiers were lined up outside the station, and two
officers guarded the entrance. They had a list of our names, and as each
name was read out, we were passed into the station, where a long, black
troop-train composed of third-class carriages was waiting for us. The
front wagons were, I believe, full of either wounded or prisoners, as
only a few carriages were reserved for us. However, we crowded in, eight
of us in a carriage meant for six, and found, greatly to our surprise,
that there were two soldiers with loaded rifles sitting at the window in
each compartment. There was nothing to be said, we were entirely in
their hands, and after all the Dutch frontier was not so very far off.

The soldiers had had orders to sit at the two windows and prevent us
seeing out, but our two guards were exceedingly nice men, not Prussians
but Danish Germans from Schleswig-Holstein, who did not at all enjoy the
job they had been put to, so our windows were not shut nor our blinds
down as those in some of the other carriages were.

A whistle sounded, and we were off. We went very very slowly, and waited
an interminable time at each station. When evening came on we had only
arrived as far as Louvain, and were interested to see two Zeppelins
looming clear and black against the sunset sky, in the Malines direction
flying towards Antwerp. It was not too dark to see the fearful
destruction that had been dealt out to this famous Catholic University,
only built and endowed during the last eighty years by great and heroic
sacrifices on the part of both clergy and people. The two German
soldiers in our carriage were themselves ashamed when they saw from the
window the crumbling ruins and burnt-out buildings which are all that
remain of Louvain now. One of them muttered: "If only the people had not
fired at the soldiers, this would never have happened." Since he felt
inclined to discuss the matter, one of us quoted the clause from The
Hague Convention of 1907 which was signed by Germany:

The territory of neutral states is inviolable.

The