“I have a message to deliver to the members of the Communal Council,” said the officer politely.

“The councillors are at dinner and cannot be disturbed,” was the firm reply.  “But if monsieur desires he can sit down and wait for them.”  So the young officer patiently seated himself on a wooden bench while his men ranged themselves along one side of the hall.  After a delay of perhaps twenty minutes the door of the dining-room opened and a councillor appeared, wiping his moustache.

“I understand that you have a message for the Council.  Well, what is it?” he demanded pompously.

The young officer clicked his heels together and bowed from the waist.

“The message I am instructed to give you, sir,” he said politely, “is that Antwerp is now a German city.  You are requested by the general commanding his Imperial Majesty’s forces so to inform your townspeople and to assure them that they will not be molested so long as they display no hostility towards our troops.”

While this dramatic little scene was being enacted in the historic setting of the Hotel de Ville, the burgomaster, unaware that the enemy was already within the city gates, was conferring with the German commander, who informed him that if the outlying forts were immediately surrendered no money indemnity would be demanded from the city, though all merchandise found in its warehouses would be confiscated.

The first troops to enter were a few score cyclists, who advanced cautiously from street to street and from square to square until they formed a network of scouts extending over the entire city.  After them, at the quick-step, came a brigade of infantry and hard on the heels of the infantry clattered half a dozen batteries of horse artillery.  These passed through the city to the waterfront at a spanking trot, unlimbered on the quays and opened fire with shrapnel on the retreating Belgians, who had already reached the opposite side of the river.  Meanwhile a company of infantry started at the double across the pontoon-bridge, evidently unaware that its middle spans had been destroyed.  Without an instant’s hesitation two soldiers threw off their knapsacks, plunged into the river, swam across the gap, clambered up on to the other portion of the bridge and, in spite of a heavy fire from the fort at the Tete de Flandre, dashed forward to reconnoitre.  That is the sort of deed that wins the Iron Cross.  Within little more than an hour after reaching the waterfront the Germans had brought up their engineers, the bridge had been repaired, the fire from Fort St. Anne had been silenced, and their troops were pouring across the river in a steady stream in pursuit of the Belgians.  The grumble of field-guns, which continued throughout the night, told us that they had overtaken the Belgian rearguard.