ur, was filled with Belgian, French, and
British staff officers, diplomatists, Cabinet Ministers and
correspondents, he flung his arms out in a nervous, characteristic
gesture, as though pushing his way through a crowd. It was a most
spectacular entrance and reminded me for all the world of a scene
in a melodrama where the hero dashes up, bare-headed, on a
foam-flecked horse, and saves the heroine or the old homestead or
the family fortune, as the case may be.

While lunching with Sir Francis Villiers and the staff of the British
Legation, two English correspondents approached and asked Mr.
Churchill for an interview.

"I will not talk to you," he almost shouted, bringing his fist down upon
the table. "You have no business to be in Belgium at this time. Get
out of the country at once."

It happened that my table was so close that I could not help but
overhear the request and the response, and I remember remarking
to the friends who were dining with me: "Had Mr. Churchill said that
to me, I should have answered him, 'I have as much business in
Belgium at this time, sir, as you had in Cuba during the Spanish-
American War.'"

An hour later I was standing in the lobby talking to M. de Vos, the
Burgomaster of Antwerp, M. Louis Franck, the Antwerp member of
the Chamber of Deputies, American Consul-General Diederich and
Vice-Consul General Sherman, when Mr. Churchill rushed past us
on his way to his room. He impressed one as being always in a
tearing hurry. The Burgomaster stopped him, introduced himself,
and expressed his anxiety regarding the fate of the city. Before he
had finished Churchill was part-way up the stairs.

"I think everything will be all right now, Mr. Burgomaster," he called
down in a voice which could be distinctly heard throughout the
lobby. "You needn't worry. We're going to save the city."

Whereupon most of the civilians present heaved sighs of relief.
They felt that a real sailor had taken the wheel. Those of us who
were conversant with the situation were also relieved because we
took it for granted that Mr. Churchill would not have made so
confident and public an assertion unless ample reinforcements in
men and guns were on the way. Even then the words of this
energetic, impetuous young man did not entirely reassure me, for
from the windows of my room I could hear the German guns quite
plainly. They had come appreciably nearer.

That afternoon and the three days following Mr. Churchill spent