The Kaiser, with three of his sons, left Berlin on August 17th for Mayence, about 100 miles to the north of Strassburg; but he did not venture upon Belgian soil.

An English officer who returned to England from Brussels at this time had had the most interesting experience, and, it should be added, privilege, of chatting with one of the heroic defenders of Liège, a Belgian officer. To a representative of The Daily Telegraph he said:

I never had any doubt that the Belgians were plucky fellows. The defence of Liège shows them in heroic light.

One of them, in the course of a casual conversation, which would not have given you any idea that he, or any of his colleagues, had taken part in anything extraordinary, said: "Some of us late arrivals only managed to get to our posts when the German attack began. It was night-time. We replied sharply with our guns. Until the dawn came we had no very distinct idea of what our practice was. Then we noticed heaps of slain Germans in a semi-circle at the foot of our fort. The German guns must have been much less successful, because they rarely hit us that night. They did better at daybreak. We did better still.

"As line after line of the German infantry advanced, we simply mowed them down. It was terribly easy, monsieur, and I turned to a brother officer of mine more than once and said, 'Voilà! They are coming on again, in a dense, close formation! They must be mad!' They made no attempt at deploying, but came on, line after line, almost shoulder to shoulder, until, as we shot them down, the fallen were heaped one on top of the other, in an awful barricade of dead and wounded men that threatened to mask our guns and cause us trouble. I thought of Napoleon's saying—if he said it, monsieur; and I doubt it, for he had no care of human life!—'C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre!' No, it was slaughter—just slaughter!

"So high became the barricade of the dead and wounded that we did not know whether to fire through it or to go out and clear openings with our hands. We would have liked to extricate some of the wounded from the dead, but we dared not. A stiff wind carried away the smoke of the guns quickly, and we could see some of the wounded men trying to release themselves from their terrible position. I will confess I crossed myself, and could have wished that the smoke had remained!

"But, would you believe it, this veritable wall of dead and dying actually enabled these wonderful Germans to creep closer, and actually charge up the glacis? Of course, they got no farther than half way, for our maxims and rifles swept them back. Of course, we had our own losses, but they were slight compared with the carnage inflicted upon our enemies."

The English officer added:

"There is, as you know, quite a large colony of English people in Brussels, and also in Bruges. They have their English club and tennis courts. Many of these Britishers have their own houses, and live in Belgium for three or six months every year. When the war broke out all but those owning, or renting, property were advised to leave the country, which they did. Many English householders in Belgium also closed their residences and left for England.

"The Belgians were at first extremely dubious of our intention to send troops to Belgium to support them, and night after night, at a certain well-known seaside resort, they crowded about the British Consulate for news. When it was definitely known that the British Expeditionary Force had started Belgian men and women asked for the Union Jack to be brought out by the Consul, and when this was done they filed past, kissing it. I saw this with my own eyes."

On the 18th it became evident that the German forces had gathered on the line Maastricht-Liège and were about to make an attempt to penetrate the allied armies facing them. There was no serious fighting on this date, but German cavalry were seen in the direction of Antwerp.

The long-expected battle appeared to have begun on the 19th (Wednesday), and Tirlemont, a town some twenty-three miles from Brussels, on the railway to Liège, was said to be its centre. Refugees hurried into Brussels from Aerschot and Diest, and hundreds of civilians from Tirlemont also made for the capital.

Saarburg was occupied by the French on the same day.