and returned leading an eight-year-old
boy.

"Me talk American," said the boy. "We two speak together?"

And so we talked, for the road was long and weary.

Their advance was so gradual that, although I did not leave Antwerp
until the bombardment was over, I caught up with the army of
refugees before Roosendaal, just across the Dutch border.

Here Holland opened out her arms. The kindness of the Dutch--as
yet personal, unorganized endeavor--was beyond conception.

Churches, houses, public halls, stations were thrown open to the
multitude. You saw hundreds of Dutch soldiers join in the procession,
lift babies and bundles, and walk with them for miles. At Dordrecht,
when the trains came through, peasants passed scores of babies'
milk-bottles into the cars. When a jolly-looking Dutch girl, with a great
big gleaming smile that reminded me of some one, gave me milk and
chocolate, the tears began to trickle down my cheeks. I suppose it
was the reaction, or because I was tired, or, perhaps, because the
crowd was cheering and waving at us. For the others there were piles
of bread, Dutch cake, and, best of all, some good, long drinks of
water. For ten days Antwerp's water supply had been cut off. Von
Beseler, German siege commander, had seen to that.

At Bergen op Zoom and Roosendaal people used the walls of the
houses for post-offices. They wrote their names in chalk letters, giving
directions to relatives lost in the scramble.

After ox carts, rowboats, and river barges had done their share, a
Dutch-Belgian "Stoom Tram" joggled us along for a few miles. Some
more walking and a little running before I at last crawled aboard a
twenty-car freight and passenger train moving slowly toward the east.

At the first telegraph office across the Dutch border, I filed a cable
story to the "Boston Journal"; and later started an account for the
"New York Evening Post." I had an idea that I would score a "beat" or
"scoop" so that the people of the Back Bay could read of Antwerp's
fall over their coffee-cups the next morning. My cable account had too
much inside information. There were in it too many facts concerning
Winston Churchill's visit, also information about the number of Royal
Marines engaged, none of which it was thought proper to give out at
that time. So the English censor refused to let it through. That,
however, did not prevent the Dutch Cable Company from pocketing
my two hundred guilders.

By the time