"Where is De Tijd printed?"
"In Amsterdam...."
"In which street?"
"Well ...! The Nieuwe Zijds Voorburgwal."
"All right; you may go!"
Having pushed my way through the loafers, who stood waiting before the house, I was able to continue my journey to Maastricht.
A few days later I had to go to Canne, a Belgian hamlet near the frontier, south of Maastricht. In the evening of August 18th an atrociously barbarous crime had been committed there, a cool-blooded murder. At Canne live some good, kind Flemings, who would not hurt a fly. The kind-hearted burgomaster had, moreover, tried for days to comfort his fellow-citizens, and was for ever saying:
"Leave everything to me; I'll invite them to have a glass of wine with me, and you will see then that they are kind people."
This he had done. Already for many days he had treated several officers to his best claret.
Tuesday night, August 18th, at about 11 o'clock, a train of luggage carts passed through Canne, and in the village the Browning of one of the soldiers in the last van went off suddenly. This was the signal for all Germans to start shooting indiscriminately, anywhere, at anything, happily without hitting anybody. A few tipsy soldiers went to the burgomaster's house, and no sooner had his wife opened the door for the barbarians, when a shot was fired, the bullet passing through the unfortunate lady's head into the wall opposite the door. I was there early the next morning and saw the hole. It is evident that the soldiers ill-treated the dead lady with their rifles in a horrible manner, for a large part of the wall was spattered over with blood.