I have heard it said that Antwerp was indifferent to its fate, but it made no such impression on me.  Never have I lived in such an atmosphere of gloom and depression.  Except around the St. Antoine at the lunch and dinner-hours and in the cafes just before nightfall did one see anything which was even a second cousin to jollity.  The people did not smile.  They went about with grave and anxious faces.  In fact, outside of the places I have mentioned, one rarely heard a laugh.  The people who sat at the round iron tables on the sidewalks in front of the cafes drinking their light wines and beer —­no spirits were permitted to be sold—­sat in silence and with solemn faces.  God knows, there was little enough for them to smile about.  Their nation was being slowly strangled.  Three-quarters of its soil was under the heel of the invader.  An alien flag, a hated flag, flew over their capital.  Their King and their Government were fugitives, moving from place to place as a vagrant moves on at the approach of a policeman.  Men who, a month before, were prosperous shopkeepers and tradesmen were virtual bankrupts, not knowing where the next hundred-franc note was coming from.  Other men had seen their little flower-surrounded homes in the suburbs razed to the ground that an approaching enemy might find no cover.  Though the shops were open, they had no customers for the people had no money, or, if they had money they were hoarding it against the days when they might be homeless fugitives.  No, there was not very much to smile about in Antwerp.

There were amusing incidents, of course.  If one recognizes humour when he sees it he can find it in almost any situation.  After the first Zeppelin attack the management of the St. Antoine fitted up bedrooms in the cellars.

A century or more ago the St. Antoine was not a hotel but a monastery, and its cellars are all that the cellars of a monastery ought to be—­thick-walled and damp and musty.  Yet these subterranean suites were in as great demand among the diplomatists as are tables in the palm-room of the Savoy during the season.  From my bedroom window, which overlooked the court, I could see apprehensive guests cautiously emerging from their cellar chambers in the early morning.  It reminded me of woodchucks coming out of their holes.

As the siege progressed and the German guns were pushed nearer to the city, those who lived in what might be termed “conspicuous” localities began to seek other quarters.

“I’m going to change hotels to-day,” I heard a man remark to a friend.

“Why?” inquired the other.

“Because I am within thirty yards of the cathedral,” was the answer.  The towering spire of the famous cathedral is, you must understand, the most conspicuous thing in Antwerp—­on clear days you can see it from twenty miles away—­and to live in its immediate vicinity during a bombardment of the city was equivalent to taking shelter under the only tree in a field during a heavy thunderstorm.