Monsieur and Madame S. came back from Brussels today and oh, it was good to get a little, first-hand, outside news! It appears that Brussels still has a semblance of her normal activity, as the heel of oppression, in the presence of different foreign representatives, has not cut in so deeply there. Madame S. said, one evening when they were walking in the street she noticed a man following them and when they reached a particularly dark corner he came quickly up and whispered, "Would you like to see a 'London Times'? Then come into the shadow across the way." It is well known that a single copy has already sold for 165 francs and also there has been quite a traffic in renting sheets of it for twenty francs the half hour.

Coming back from Brussels, they drove through Louvain—martyred Louvain! It was too dreadful to contemplate. First the material destruction of those wonderful buildings, like an exquisite pattern in lace, torn by a ruthless sword and eaten by wanton flame; then the misery and deprivation of the people who were able to resist those hours of agony and peril.

Every sort of device was used for shelter and hollow eyes and terror-stricken faces looked out from the damp cellars under the ruins, where destitute families of at least half the population had crept to find a home.

Now we know why the taking of Antwerp has been kept so modestly in the background and has never been advertised in LiÉge like all the other victories, which were always flaunted in large print. It is because while the Germans were studiously busy taking the city, fort by fort, the Belgian army was walking out by the side door, along the coast to France, so that when a big personage was sent from Germany to make a grand, triumphal entry into Antwerp, he found an empty city and received the sword of a general, ill and incapacitated for duty.

It is said that the Prussian general who accomplished the siege was decorated amid a grand flourish of trumpets and then retired, since one of the great motives was the capture of the Belgian army, which is now safe in France and taking a week-end off somewhere. Is it not fine that little Belgium has been able to impede the great German army two and one half months, which has given the other actors in the play time to change their costumes? Oh, it is fine to be brave!

Countess de M. came with Monsieur and Madame S. from Brussels and has her passports all in order to go to France, to her husband who is in the Belgian army near Calais. She is leaving at once, under the protection of the Dutch Consul, who is here in LiÉge for a few days (a circumstance ordained by the Fates) and who is going to conduct her in his auto over the frontier to Maestricht, Holland. And the miracle has happened! If I can get my papers in readiness in two days, she will take me with her. I am wild with joy, but I feel it is like a dream that one knows cannot come true.