for his stick.  In the automobile of the legation we raced to the Hotel de Ville.  There Mr. Whitlock, as the moving-picture people say, “registered” indignation.  Mr. Davis was present, he made it understood, not as a ticket-of-leave man, and because he had been ordered to report, but in spite of that fact.  He was there as the friend of the American minister, and the word “Spion” must be removed from his papers.

And so, on the pass that Rupert gave me, below where he had written that I was to be treated as a spy, they wrote I was “not at all,” “gar nicht,” to be treated as a spy, and that I was well known to the American minister, and to that they affixed the official seal.

That ended it, leaving me with one valuable possession.  It is this:  should any one suggest that I am a spy, or that I am not a friend of Brand Whitlock, I have the testimony of the Imperial German Government to the contrary.

Chapter III The Burning Of Louvain

After the Germans occupied Brussels they closed the road to Aix-la-Chapelle.  A week later, to carry their wounded and prisoners, they reopened it.  But for eight days Brussels was isolated.  The mail-trains and the telegraph office were in the hands of the invaders.  They accepted our cables, censored them, and three days later told us, if we still wished, we could forward them.  But only from Holland.  By this they accomplished three things:  they learned what we were writing about them, for three days prevented any news from leaving the city, and offered us an inducement to visit Holland, so getting rid of us.

The despatches of those diplomats who still remained in Brussels were treated in the same manner.  With the most cheerful complacency the military authorities blue-pencilled their despatches to their governments.  When the diplomats learned of this, with their code cables they sent open cables stating that their confidential despatches were being censored and delayed.  They still were delayed.  To get any message out of Brussels it was necessary to use an automobile, and nearly every automobile had taken itself off to Antwerp.  If a motor-car appeared it was at once commandeered.  This was true also of horses and bicycles.  All over Brussels you saw delivery wagons, private carriages, market carts with the shafts empty and the horse and harness gone.  After three days a German soldier who did not own a bicycle was poor indeed.

Requisitions were given for these machines, stating they would be returned after the war, by which time they will be ready for the scrap-heap.  Any one on a bicycle outside the city was arrested, so the only way to get messages through was by going on foot to Ostend or Holland, or by an automobile for which the German authorities had given a special pass.  As no one knew when one of these automobiles might start, we carried always with us our cables and letters, and intrusted them to any stranger who was trying to run the lines.