e "for retaining until the present time their praiseworthy
sangfroid, and regretting that the responsibilities of their office
necessitated their own removal to a neighborhood more safe."

Queen Elizabeth, whom danger made a democrat, walked right into
my hotel, if you please, and stopped casually to say good-bye to the
Russian Minister. The crowd outside did not know she was leaving for
Ostend under cover of darkness--they cheered her loudly just the
same. She is a spunky sort of queen.

Then came the flight. You knew the fear of the Germans had got into
their blood when waiters dropped their plates and dishes and ran;
when shops, houses, hotels closed and the people melted away;
when the French chambermaid besought with frightened eyes that
Monsieur take her away to England, and when the hotel proprietor
disappeared without even asking for his bill.

There were other sights that did one good to see: such as gray-haired
Mrs. Richardson, venerable figure of a British nurse, with six wars to
her credit and a breastful of decorations from four different
governments, who refused to leave her hospital even if it was blown
to pieces, so long as there were men to help and wounds to heal.

When the St. Antoine closed I took her to the American Consulate to
find a house where she could stay. That night and the next loads of
English Red Cross busses with their households of pain and ether
rumbled over the pontoon bridge across the Scheldt, went past Fort
Tete de Flandre, and disappeared in the swampy meadows on the
road to Ghent. I never saw her again, but I have always hoped that
Mrs. Richardson was among the nurses who went with them.

When on Wednesday morning I was turned out of my room, I made
my way past a pressing throng of foreign faces to the Queen's Hotel
on the water front. There I found Arthur Ruhl and James H. Hare,
who had just come over from England. The hotel overlooked the
River Scheldt, forming a wide crescent on the city's north, and was
within fifty yards of one of the longest pontoon bridges constructed in
modern warfare.

Here was a sight to come again and rend the memory. The crowds
were endeavoring to get away over one of the two avenues of
escape still open. I estimated that between five in the afternoon and
the following dawn three hundred thousand persons must have
passed through the city's gates. They were the people of Antwerp
itself, swelled by exiles from Alost, Aerschot, Malines