e Legation this morning and was very
grateful because we contrived to cash out of our own pockets a
twenty-dollar express check for him. He was flat broke with his pocket
bulging with checks and was living in a _pension_ at six francs a day.
There is going to be a lot of discomfort and suffering unless some money
is made available pretty soon. The worst of it is that this is the
height of the tourist season and Europe is full of school-teachers and
other people who came over for short trips with meager resources
carefully calculated to get them through their traveling and home again
by a certain date. If they are kept long they are going to be in a bad
way. One of our American colony here, Heineman, had a goodly store of
currency and had placed it at the disposal of the Legation, to be used
in cashing at face value travelers' checks and other similar paper which
bankers will not touch now with a pair of tongs. Shaler has taken charge
of that end of the business and has all the customers he can handle.
Heineman will have to bide his time to get any money back on all his
collection of paper, and his contribution has meant a lot to people who
will never know who helped them.

[Illustration: Her Majesty, Elisabeth, Queen of the Belgians
_Photograph by Underwood & Underwood_]

[Illustration: Mr. Brand Whitlock, American Minister to Belgium]

There was a meeting of the diplomatic corps last night to discuss the
question of moving with the Court to Antwerp in certain eventualities.
It is not expected that the Government will move unless and until the
Germans get through Liege and close enough to threaten Louvain, which is
only a few miles out of Brussels. There was no unanimous decision on the
subject, but if the Court goes, the Minister and I will probably take
turns going up, so as to keep in communication with the Government.
There is not much we can accomplish there, and we have so much to do
here that it will be hard for either of us to get away. It appeals to
some of the colleagues to take refuge with a Court in distress, but I
can see little attraction in the idea of settling down inside the line
of forts and waiting for them to be pounded with heavy artillery.

Liege seems to be holding out still. The Belgians have astonished
everybody, themselves included. It was generally believed even here that
the most they could do was to make a futile resistance and get slaughtered
in a foolhardy attempt to defend their territ