The presence of British troops and ships at Ostend, which has been announced officially in all the Belgian and French papers, has already begun to effect its purpose; by reassuring the Belgians, and distracting the Germans from pouring all their reinforcements on to the front in France.
It is also forcing the light, skirmishing German parties of advance, which threatened the extreme left of the Allied armies, from Courtrai to Dunkirk, to contract.
(The anticipations here outlined have since been borne out closely by the actual events of the fall of Antwerp.)
Sunday.
The Germans resumed their bombardment of Malines yesterday. The church tower provided their chief object. They were successfully kept out of the town.
The news is confirmed that something like a "whole army corps" has been diverted from its advance across the frontier by the spirited sally of the Belgians.
I was down on the lines west of the city again to-day. The troops are in fine spirits at their success. The British sympathy and admiration have been greatly appreciated. The tribute of the House of Commons is spread by the journals broadcast, in large print.
At my small point of view there was only some slight skirmishing. Since four o'clock yesterday the big guns have been having a rest. Some peasants, captured and released, report the retirement of German cavalry upon Louvain. These peasants have had seven days of terror. They, including some women, have been driven at the head of a small German contingent to and fro, threatened with death behind and in front. They relate that those who fell out were shot. Some of them were allowed to stop last night on the steps of the Cathedral, as they were being herded through deserted Malines. They must have been the same whom we saw pass, and heard afterwards murmuring there, while we waited concealed inside.
The large number of Belgian wounds are in the legs; possibly from lying behind two little elevated screens, in place of entrenching; but the German rifle-fire is still low.