The Fathers were already in bed, but I soon got them out again. Within ten minutes I was enjoying what, in the circumstances, was a splendid meal, and the Fathers were absorbed in the daily and illustrated papers which I had brought for them.
The conditions at Louvain were the same as some weeks ago: hunger and misery. Some male prisoners had come back, and also over 150 female prisoners, who for more than a month had been in captivity in the Munster Camp. During the last days a real reign of terror ruled. Hostages were continually claimed, and nearly always they took clerics. The week before the people had feared a new destruction. It was said that there had been shooting again, but happily the inquiry showed that a German soldier did it, and he was punished. The shot had been fired in front of the Josephite convent.
A remarkable strike had taken place in the Leo XIII Hospital. The head of this institution, Dr. Tits, also had been taken as a hostage. It was the most blackguardly act one can think of, to take away the man who had spent night and day mostly nursing wounded Germans. Dr. Noyons found it so harsh that he took counsel with the other doctors, and they decided not to resume work before Dr. Tits came back. This of course happened immediately.
The man who bears the full responsibility for the destruction of Louvain, General von Manteuffel, had left already when I visited the town this time, and nobody has ever been able to find out what became of him. The latest proclamations were all signed: "By order of the General Government of Brussels—the Etappe-Commander."
Louvain was of course on tenterhooks about the course of the siege of Antwerp, but everybody was quite confident that this fortress would withstand a long, long time, although they saw quite well that the German attack was very fierce, for the tremendous roar of the cannon never ceased for a moment.
A walking excursion of one day took me to Brussels. I might have done it in a few hours less, but I lost my way in the wood-paths near Brussels, for at a certain moment I read on a finger-post, "Brussels four miles"; and after walking for a long time, and wondering whether I should ever finish those four miles, I read suddenly: "Brussels—eight miles!" That gave me such a shock that once more I had nearly taken the wrong way.
I put all my hope on a car that loomed up in the distance. It was assisting in the reprovisioning of Brussels, and only for that reason had the carman got permission to use it. I signalled to him, and he stopped—a big lout of a man who evidently had had a drop too much; he would not allow me to ride on with him, because he preferred to remain alone on his car than to help a spy. "I am a Belgian, a Belgian, and not a traitor, not a traitor of my country," he assured me, with a lot of beery tears. In any case the man meant well, and probably he had tried to drown his troubles in drink.
In other circumstances I should not have taken so much trouble, but I was so tired that I gave the man all my papers to make him see that I was a Netherland journalist. But according to him that didn't matter at all, because the Netherlanders were quite as dirty as the Germans, for they had allowed the enemies of Belgium to pass through their country, and so on. In a torrent of words I told him that there was not a word of truth in it, and that the Belgian Government would surely lose no time in declaring the same as soon as the country was free again. At last I appealed to his heart by relating all the Netherlanders had done for the Belgians. This had the desired effect, and I was allowed to drive home with him.
At every inn he felt thirsty, and made me feel quite clearly that I had every reason to treat him. And every time that we went back to our seats he said again: