“It is impossible to blame these peaceful, quiet-living burghers of Antwerp for the fears that possessed them when a merciless rain of German shells began to fall into the streets and on the roofs of their houses and public buildings.  The Burgomaster had in his proclamation given them excellent advice, to remain calm for instance, and he certainly set them an admirable example, but it was impossible to counsel perfection to the Belgians, who knew what had happened to their fellow-citizens in other towns which the Germans had passed through.

FOUGHT TO GET ON THE BOATS

“Immense crowds of them—­men, women and children—­gathered along the quayside and at the railway stations in an effort to make a hasty exit from the city.  Their condition was pitiable in the extreme.  Family parties made up the biggest proportion of this vast crowd of broken men and women.  There were husbands and wives with their groups of scared children, unable to understand what was happening, yet dimly conscious in their childish way that something unusual and terrible and perilous had come into their lives.  “There were fully 40,000 of them assembled on the long quay, and all of them were inspired by the sure and certain hope that they would be among the lucky ones who would get on board one of the few steamers and the fifteen or twenty tugboats available.  As there was no one to arrange their systematic embarkation a wild struggle followed amongst the frantic people, to secure a place.  Men, women and children fought desperately with each other to get on board, and in that moment of supreme anguish human nature was seen in one of its worst moods; but who can blame these stricken people?

APPALLED BY THE HORROR OF WAR

“They were fleeing from les barbares,’ and shells that were destroying their homes and giving their beloved town to the flames were screaming over their heads.  Their trade was not war.  They were merchants, shopkeepers, comfortable citizens of middle age or more; there were many women and children among them, and this horror had come upon them in a more appalling shape than any in which horror had visited a civilized community in modern times.

“There was a scarcity of gangways to the boats, and the only means of boarding them was by narrow planks sloping at dangerous angles.  Up these the fugitives struggled, and the strong elbowed the weak out of their way in a mad haste to escape.

“By 2 o’clock Thursday most of the tugboats had got away, but there were still some 15,000 people who had not been able to escape and had to await whatever fate was in store for them.

A GREAT EXODUS OF INHABITANTS