I scrambled up somehow the next day, and found a very large party assembled outside the Gare du Nord, as every single English nurse and doctor in Brussels was to be expelled.  There must have been fifteen or twenty doctors and dressers altogether, and more than a hundred Sisters and nurses.

A squad of German soldiers were lined up outside the station, and two officers guarded the entrance.  They had a list of our names, and as each name was read out, we were passed into the station, where a long, black troop-train composed of third-class carriages was waiting for us.  The front wagons were, I believe, full of either wounded or prisoners, as only a few carriages were reserved for us.  However, we crowded in, eight of us in a carriage meant for six, and found, greatly to our surprise, that there were two soldiers with loaded rifles sitting at the window in each compartment.  There was nothing to be said, we were entirely in their hands, and after all the Dutch frontier was not so very far off.

The soldiers had had orders to sit at the two windows and prevent us seeing out, but our two guards were exceedingly nice men, not Prussians but Danish Germans from Schleswig-Holstein, who did not at all enjoy the job they had been put to, so our windows were not shut nor our blinds down as those in some of the other carriages were.

A whistle sounded, and we were off.  We went very very slowly, and waited an interminable time at each station.  When evening came on we had only arrived as far as Louvain, and were interested to see two Zeppelins looming clear and black against the sunset sky, in the Malines direction flying towards Antwerp.  It was not too dark to see the fearful destruction that had been dealt out to this famous Catholic University, only built and endowed during the last eighty years by great and heroic sacrifices on the part of both clergy and people.  The two German soldiers in our carriage were themselves ashamed when they saw from the window the crumbling ruins and burnt-out buildings which are all that remain of Louvain now.  One of them muttered:  “If only the people had not fired at the soldiers, this would never have happened.”  Since he felt inclined to discuss the matter, one of us quoted the clause from The Hague Convention of 1907 which was signed by Germany: 

     The territory of neutral states is inviolable.

     The fact of a neutral Power resisting even by force, attempts to
     violate its neutrality cannot be regarded as a hostile act.

This was beyond him, but he reiterated:  “No civilians have any right to fire at soldiers.”  And all the time they were killing civilians by bombs thrown on open cities.  So deep has the sanctity of the army sunk into the German heart.