To waste and havoc yonder world, which I
So fair and good created!”
Paradise Lost.
IN THE PRISON CITY
I
“THANK Heaven we are in a sane country at last!” was my thought when, after struggling as best we could through terror-stricken France, my companion and I crossed the Belgian frontier early in August 1914.
Such was the impression made by the calm confidence of a people already meeting the German forces at the point where their inadequately fortified boundaries had been treacherously attacked. The impression may have been partly due to contrast with some days amid the wild confusion and panic of Paris, where, almost devoid of funds (since all letters of credit were valueless), we had existed, with several other stranded travellers, on the charity, or rather faith, of a prominent hotel proprietor. During that never-to-be-forgotten sojourn in the famous capital, we had witnessed something resembling the frenzied excitement of revolution days. The entire population, expecting a repetition of the horrors of 1870, was in a fever of alarm; distraction and tumult reigned on every side. Streets rang night and day with the hysterical cries of newsvendors announcing some unlooked-for lightning flash through the cloud of storm rapidly spreading darkness over the world; echoed to the ceaseless tramp of troops hurrying to the front, and with the shrieks and howls of applause raised by half-maddened crowds thronging the thoroughfares.