Speaking to one man about the Rubens “Descent from the Cross” still hanging in the cathedral, I suggested that such a place was safe from bombardment.  He looked up at the lace-like old tower, whose chimes, jangling down through leaping shafts and jets of Gothic stone, have so long been Antwerp’s voice.  “They wouldn’t stop a minute,” he said.

All eastern Belgium was cut off.  Brussels, to which people run over for dinner and the theatre, might have been in China.  Meanwhile Antwerp seemed safe for the time and I returned to Ghent, got a train next day as far south as Deynze, where the owner of a two-wheeled Belgian cart was induced to take me another thirty kilometres on down to Courtrai.  It was rumored that there had been a battle at Courtrai—­it was, at any rate, close to the border and the German right wing and in the general line of their advance.

We rattled along the hard highroad, paved with Belgian blocks, with a well-pounded dirt path at the side for bicycles, between almost uninterrupted rows of low houses and tiny fields in which men and women both were working.  Other carts like ours passed by, occasional heavy wagons drawn by one of the handsome Belgian draft-horses, and now and then a small loaded cart, owner perched on top, zipping along behind a jolly Belgian work dog—­pulling as if his soul depended on it and apparently having the time of his life.  Every one was busy, not a foot of ground wasted; a more incongruous place into which to force the waste and lawlessness of war it would be hard to imagine.

Past an old chateau, with its lake and pheasant-preserve; along the River Lys, with its miles of flax, soaked in this peculiarly potent water, now drying in countless little cones, like the tents of some vast Lilliputian army, and so at last into Courtrai.

It was like hundreds of other quaint old towns along the French and Flemish border, not yet raked by war, but motionless, with workmen idle, young men gone to the front, and nothing for people to do but exchange rumors and wait for the clash to come.  I strolled round the old square and through some of the winding streets.  One window was filled with tricolor sashes carrying the phrase:  “Long live our dear Belgium!  May God preserve her!”

On blank walls was this proclamation in parallel columns of French and Flemish: 

Ville De Courtrai Avis Important a la Population Courtraisienne Stad Kortrijk Belangrijk Bericht aan de Kortrijksche Bevolking

I am about to make an appeal to your reason and your sentiments of humanity.

If, in the course of the unjust war which we are now enduring, it happens that French or Belgian troops bring German prisoners to our city, I beseech you to maintain your calm and dignity.  These prisoners, wounded or not, I shall take under my protection, became I say that they are not really to blame for acts which they have been ordered to do under threat of cruel punishment.