I remember that as I continued to my room the corridors smelled of smoke, and upon inquiring its cause I learned that the British Minister, Sir Francis Villiers, and his secretaries were burning papers in the rooms occupied by the British Legation.  The Russian Minister, who was superintending the packing of his trunks in the hall, stopped me to say good-bye.  Imagine my surprise, then, upon going down to breakfast the following morning, to meet Count Goblet d’Alviella, the Vice-President of the Senate and a minister of State, leaving the dining-room.

“Why, Count!” I exclaimed, “I had supposed that you were well on your way to Ostend by this time.”

“We had expected to be,” explained the venerable statesman, “but at four o’clock this morning the British Minister sent us word that Mr. Winston Churchill had started for Antwerp and asking us to wait and hear what he has to say.”

At one o’clock that afternoon a big drab-coloured touring-car filled with British naval officers tore up the Place de Meir, its horn sounding a hoarse warning, took the turn into the narrow Marche aux Souliers on two wheels, and drew up in front of the hotel.  Before the car had fairly come to a stop the door of the tonneau was thrown violently open and out jumped a smooth-faced, sandy-haired, stoop-shouldered, youthful-looking man in the undress Trinity House uniform.  There was no mistaking who it was.  It was the Right Hon. Winston Churchill.  As he darted into the crowded lobby, which, as usual at the luncheon-hour, was filled with Belgian, French, and British staff officers, diplomatists, Cabinet Ministers and correspondents, he flung his arms out in a nervous, characteristic gesture, as though pushing his way through a crowd.  It was a most spectacular entrance and reminded me for all the world of a scene in a melodrama where the hero dashes up, bare-headed, on a foam-flecked horse, and saves the heroine or the old homestead or the family fortune, as the case may be.

While lunching with Sir Francis Villiers and the staff of the British Legation, two English correspondents approached and asked Mr. Churchill for an interview.

“I will not talk to you,” he almost shouted, bringing his fist down upon the table.  “You have no business to be in Belgium at this time.  Get out of the country at once.”

It happened that my table was so close that I could not help but overhear the request and the response, and I remember remarking to the friends who were dining with me:  “Had Mr. Churchill said that to me, I should have answered him, ’I have as much business in Belgium at this time, sir, as you had in Cuba during the Spanish-American War.’”

An hour later I was standing in the lobby talking to M. de Vos, the Burgomaster of Antwerp, M. Louis Franck, the Antwerp member of the Chamber of Deputies, American Consul-General Diederich and Vice-Consul General Sherman, when Mr. Churchill rushed past us on his way to his room.  He impressed one as being always in a tearing hurry.  The Burgomaster stopped him, introduced himself, and expressed his anxiety regarding the fate of the city.  Before he had finished Churchill was part-way up the stairs.