I can quite understand old veterans boring everybody to death with
reminiscences. I see some forty years from now that people will be
saying: "I don't want to let old man Gibson get hold of me and tell me
all about the war of 1914!"

This morning I received a telegram from Richard Harding Davis, who wants
to join the Belgian forces. We are trying to arrange it this morning,
and I expect to see him any day now.

We are going to have a lot of newspaper men in our midst. I met two more
of them last night. None of them who have so far appeared speak any
language but English, but they are all quite confident that they can get
all the news. I look next for Palmer and Jimmy Hare and the rest of the
crowd.

Maxwell, the _Telegraph_ correspondent, yesterday showed me a photograph
of a French bulldog that has been doing good service at Liege. His
master, who is an officer in one of the forts, fastens messages in his
collar and shoves him out onto the glacis. The puppy makes a blue streak
for home and, as he is always sent at night, has managed so far to avoid
the Germans. His mistress brings him back to the edge of town and starts
him back for the fort.

The Belgian troops have so far had to dam the flood of Germans with
little or no help from the allies. The Kaiser expected, so far as we can
make out, to sweep through Belgium with little opposition and be
fighting in France in three days! The Belgians have knocked his schedule
out by twelve days already, and there is no telling how much longer they
may hold out. "My military advisers" tell me that in view of the great
necessity for a quick campaign in France, so as to get the army back in
time to head off the Russian flood when it begins to pour over the
northern frontier, the loss of this much time is equivalent to the loss
of the first great battle. The moral effect is also tremendous.

The Minister to-day had a card from Omer which began: "_J'ai l'honneur
de faire savoir a Votre Excellence que je suis encore toujours vivant!_"
_Encore toujours_ sounds as though he were pretty emphatically alive. We
were all relieved to hear from him.

Villalobar, the Spanish Minister, came in after dinner--just to visit.
His household is greatly upset. His cook and three footmen have gone to
the war. He apologised for not inviting us to dine during these
depressing days, but said he could not, as his cook was a Lucretia di
Borgia. He is confident that the war is going to knock Brussels