I found Brussels very much changed since I had left it some weeks before.  Then it was in a fever of excitement, now it was in the chill of dark despair.  German rule was firmly established, and was growing daily more harsh and humiliating for its citizens.  Everything was done to Germanize the city, military automobiles were always dashing through, their hooters playing the notes of the Emperor’s salute, Belgian automobiles that had been requisitioned whirred up and down the streets filled with German officers’ wives and children, German time was kept, German money was current coin, and every cafe and confectioner’s shop was always crowded with German soldiers.  Every day something new was forbidden.  Now it was taking photographs—­the next day no cyclist was allowed to ride, and any cyclist in civil dress might be shot at sight, and so on.  The people were only just kept in hand by their splendid Burgomaster, M. Max, but more than once it was just touch and go whether he would be able to restrain them any longer.

What made the people almost more angry than anything else was the loss of their pigeons, as many of the Belgians are great pigeon fanciers and have very valuable birds.  Another critical moment was when they were ordered to take down all the Belgian flags.  Up to that time the Belgian flag, unlike every other town that the Germans had occupied, had floated bravely from nearly every house in Brussels.  M. Max had issued a proclamation encouraging the use of it early in the war.  Now this was forbidden as it was considered an insult to the Germans.  Even the Red Cross flag was forbidden except on the German military hospitals, and I thought Brussels looked indeed a melancholy city as we came in from Charleroi that morning in torrents of rain in the Red Cross car.

My first business was to go round and visit all my nurses.  I found most of them very unhappy because they had no work.  All the patients had been removed from the fire-station hospital and nearly all the private hospitals and ambulances were empty too.  It was said that Germans would rather have all their wounded die than be looked after by Englishwomen, and there were dreadful stories afloat which I cannot think any German believed, of English nurses putting out the eyes of the German wounded.  Altogether there were a good many English Sisters and doctors in Brussels—­three contingents sent out by the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, to which we belonged, a large unit sent by the British Red Cross Society, and a good many sent out privately.  It certainly was not worth while for more than a hundred English nurses to remain idle in Brussels, and the only thing to do now was to get them back to England as soon as possible.  In the meantime a few of them took the law into their own hands, and slipped away without a passport, and got back to England safely by unofficial means.