one else walked or used the trams.  Thus it frequently happened that a young staff officer, who had never before known the joys of motoring, would tear madly down the street in a luxurious limousine, his spurred boots resting on the broadcloth cushions, while the ci-devant owner of the car, who might be a banker or a merchant prince, would jump for the side-walk to escape being run down.  With the declaration of war and the taking over of all automobiles by the military, all speed laws were flung to the winds.

No matter how unimportant his business, every one tore through the city streets as though the devil (or the Germans) were behind him.  The staid citizens of Antwerp quickly developed a remarkably agility in getting out of the way of furiously driven cars.  They had to.  Otherwise they would have been killed.

Because, from the middle of August to the middle of October, Antwerp was the capital of Belgium and the seat of the King, Cabinet, and diplomatic corps; because from it any point on the battle-front could easily be reached by motor-car; and because, above all else, it was at the end of the cable and the one place in Belgium where there was any certainty of dispatches getting through to England, I made it my headquarters during the operations in Flanders, going out to the front in the morning and returning to the Hotel St. Antoine at night.  I doubt if war correspondence has ever been carried on under such comfortable, even luxurious, conditions.  “Going out to the front” became as commonplace a proceeding as for a business man to take the morning train to the city.  For one whose previous campaigning had been done in Persia, Mexico and North Africa and the Balkans, it was a novel experience to leave a large and fashionable hotel after breakfast, take a run of twenty or thirty miles over stone-paved roads in a powerful and comfortable car, witness a battle—­provided, of course, that there happened to be a battle on that day’s list of events—­and get back to the hotel in time to dress for dinner.  Imagine it, if you please!  Imagine leaving a line of battle, where shells were shrieking overhead and musketry was crackling along the trenches, and moaning, blood-smeared figures were being placed in ambulances, and other blood-smeared figures who no longer moaned were sprawled in strange attitudes upon the ground —­imagine leaving such a scene, I say, and in an hour, or even less, finding oneself in a hotel where men and women in evening dress were dining by the light of pink-shaded candles, or in the marble-paved palm court were sipping coffee and liqueurs to the sound of water splashing gently in a fountain.

II.  The City Of Gloom