There are touches of grim humor among the ruins.  Here on the main street, for example, is a pink placard stuck on a stick on top of the heap of brick and mortar that was once a store.  It reads:  “Elegant corsets:  Removed to Rue Malines 21.”  And again, on a number of houses that escaped the torch are pasted neatly printed little signs bearing the legend:  “This house is to be protected.  Soldiers are not allowed to enter houses or to set fire to them without orders from the Kommandantur.”

The inhabitants who have no stores to keep seem continually to wander aimlessly in the streets; and here, too, is the sight, common now all over Belgium, of many women with children begging.  Especially they linger around the entrances to the barracks, for hunger has given them a keen nose for bread, and they have soon learned that the soldier will give them what they have left over from their ample rations.  The German Government is trying to stimulate the return of the population, and is apparently doing its best to help them to earn a living by providing work.

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ANTWERP, Nov. 6.—­The Germans are working incessantly to repair the fortifications of Antwerp, mount new and heavier guns, and put the whole place into a state of defense.  The importance attached to their almost feverish activities is indicated by the fact that Field Marshal von der Goltz, the Military Governor of Belgium, ran over from Brussels and made a tour of inspection of the double girdle of forts yesterday.  His Excellency von Frankenberg and Ludwigsdorf, Personal Adjutant of the Military Governor of Antwerp, said to me in the course of a cordial interview: 

“We have two principal interests in our work here:  First, that Antwerp shall become a place of great military importance again and be prepared against attacks from the enemy, although that contingency doesn’t seem very probable.”

His Excellency was unwilling to hazard a guess as to how long the Germans could hold Antwerp against an allied siege, but said:  “I believe we could hold out longer against the Allies than they did against the Germans.  Our second interest is to revive trade and industry and the life of the city generally.  When we first came here there were only soldiers and hungry dogs on the streets; now, as you can see, the dead city is coming to life in short order.”

He scouted the idea that the people of Belgium had been or were on the brink of starvation as the result of German occupation, saying that the very contrary was the case.  “Belgium is a country which cannot sustain itself—­it produces only enough food for roughly 3,000,000 out of its 5,000,000 population, because Belgium is an industrial country, and food for the remaining 2,000,000 has to be imported.  Heretofore most of this food has come from Holland, whence some is still coming, but in no great quantity.  We have taken the problem of food supply up with the