There was no business, not a ship moving in the Scheldt. All who worked at all were helping prepare for the possible siege; those who didn't crowded the sidewalk cafes, listening to tales from the front, guessing by the aid of maps whither, across the silent, screened southwest, the German avalanche was spreading.
"Treason," "betrayal," "savagery," were on everybody's lips. For Antwerp, you might say, had been "half German"; many of its rich and influential men were of German origin, although they had lived in Belgium for years. And now the Belgians felt they had lived there as spies, and the seizure of Belgium was an act long and carefully planned. One was told of the finding of rifles in German cellars, marked "Preserves," of German consuls authorized to give prizes for the most complete inventories of their neighborhoods turned in by amateur spies.
Speaking to one man about the Rubens "Descent from the Cross" still hanging in the cathedral, I suggested that such a place was safe from bombardment. He looked up at the lace-like old tower, whose chimes, jangling down through leaping shafts and jets of Gothic stone, have so long been Antwerp's voice. "They wouldn't stop a minute," he said.
All eastern Belgium was cut off. Brussels, to which people run over for dinner and the theatre, might have been in China. Meanwhile Antwerp seemed safe for the time and I returned to Ghent, got a train next day as far south as Deynze, where the owner of a two-wheeled Belgian cart was induced to take me another thirty kilometres on down to Courtrai. It was rumored that there had been a battle at Courtrai—it was, at any rate, close to the border and the German right wing and in the general line of their advance.
We rattled along the hard highroad, paved with Belgian blocks, with a well-pounded dirt path at the side for bicycles, between almost uninterrupted rows of low houses and tiny fields in which men and women both were working. Other carts like ours passed by, occasional heavy wagons drawn by one of the handsome Belgian draft-horses, and now and then a small loaded cart, owner perched on top, zipping along behind a jolly Belgian work dog—pulling as if his soul depended on it and apparently having the time of his life. Every one was busy, not a foot of ground wasted; a more incongruous place into which to force the waste and lawlessness of war it would be hard to imagine.
Past an old chateau, with its lake and pheasant-preserve; along the
River Lys, with its miles of flax, soaked in this peculiarly potent
water, now drying in countless little cones, like the tents of some vast
Lilliputian army, and so at last into Courtrai.
It was like hundreds of other quaint old towns along the French and Flemish border, not yet raked by war, but motionless, with workmen idle, young men gone to the front, and nothing for people to do but exchange rumors and wait for the clash to come. I strolled round the old square and through some of the winding streets. One window was filled with tricolor sashes carrying the phrase: "Long live our dear Belgium! May God preserve her!"
On blank walls was this proclamation in parallel columns of French and
Flemish:
Ville De Courtrai Avis Important a la Population Courtraisienne Stad
Kortrijk Belangrijk Bericht aan de Kortrijksche Bevolking
I am about to make an appeal to your reason and your sentiments of humanity.