ptured on the 7th after a brave defense, and its last fort fell on the
15th, there were more fugitives. When Brussels was occupied without
resistance on the 20th there were still more. As the invasion spread
westward and southward, engulfing city after city in widening waves of
blood, the tide of terror and flight rose steadily. It reached its
high-water mark when Antwerp, after the Germans had pounded its outer
and inner circle of forts for nine days, was bombarded on October 7 and
captured on the 18th.

Nothing like that sad, fear-smitten exodus has been seen on earth in
modern times. There was something in it at once fateful, trembling, and
irresistible, which recalled De Quincey's famous story of The Flight of
a Tartar Tribe. No barrier on the Holland border could have kept that
flood of Belgian refugees out. They were an enormous flock of sheep and
lambs, harried by the Werwolf and fleeing for their lives.

But Holland did not want a barrier. She stood with open doors and arms,
offering an asylum to the distressed and persecuted.

I do not believe that any country has ever made a better record of wise,
steady, and true humanitarian work than Holland made in this matter. It
is not necessary to exaggerate it. Naturally, Belgium and Great Britain
bore by far the largest part of the financial burden of caring for the
refugees. Regular subsidies were guaranteed for this purpose. But
Holland gave freely and generously what was more important: a prompt and
sufficient welcome and shelter from the storm; abundant supplies of
money for immediate needs, food and clothing, a roof and a fire;
personal aid and care, nursing, medical attendance--all of which these
bewildered exiles needed desperately and at once.

This is not the place, nor the time, in which to attempt a full report
of the humane task which was suddenly thrown upon Holland by the deadly
doings of the German Werwolf in Belgium, nor of the way in which that
task was accepted and carried out. I shall note only a few things of
which I have personal knowledge.

Going along the railway line which leads to Antwerp, I saw every train
literally packed with fugitives. They had come, not in organized,
orderly companies, but in droves--tens of thousands, hundreds of
thousands. They were dazed and confused, escaping from they knew not
what, carried they knew not whither. It is well for the poet to say:

"Be not like dumb, driven cattle";

but what can you do in a ca