Thus, when that day of mellow autumn had sped all too swiftly, and he had said his last good-bye to Irene, it was to Dover he went, being ferried thence to Ostend in a destroyer.
In those early weeks of the war all England was agog with the belief that Antwerp would prove a rankling thorn in the ribs of the Germans, while men in high places cherished the delusion that a flank attack was possible along the Ostend-Bruges-Brussels line.
But Dalroy was an eminently sane person. Two hours of clear thinking in the train re-established his poise. When the Lieutenant-Commander in charge of the destroyer took him below in mid-Channel for a smoke and a drink, and the talk turned on strategy, the soldier dispelled an alluring mirage with a breath of common sense.
“The scheme is nothing short of rank lunacy,” he said. “We haven’t the men, France can spare none of hers, and Belgium must be crushed when the big battalions meet. Germany has at least three millions in the field already. Paris has been saved by a miracle. By some other miracle we may check the on-rush in France, but, if we start dividing our forces, even Heaven won’t help us.”
“Surely you’ll admit that we should strengthen the defence of Antwerp?” argued the sailor.
“I think it impracticable. Liège only held out until the new siege howitzers arrived. Namur fell at once. Why should we expect Antwerp to be impregnable?”
The navy deemed the army pessimistic, but, exactly a month later, the Lieutenant-Commander remembered that conversation, and remarked to a friend that about the middle of September he took to Ostend “a chap on the Staff who seemed to know a bit.”
It is now a matter of historical fact when Von Kluck and Sir John French began their famous race to the north, the Belgian army only escaped from Antwerp by the skin of its teeth. The city itself was occupied by the Germans on October 9th, Bruges was entered on the 13th, Von Bessler’s army reached the coast on the 15th, and the British and Belgians were attacked on the line of the Yser next day.
Thus, fate decreed that Dalroy should witness the beginning and the end of Germany’s shameless outrage on a peaceful and peace-loving country. On August 2nd, 1914, King Albert ruled over the most prosperous and contented small kingdom in Europe. Within eleven weeks he had become, as Emile Cammaerts finely puts it, “lord of a hundred fields and a few spires.”
Though Dalroy should live far beyond the alloted span of man’s life, he will never forget the strain, the misery, the sheer hopelessness of the second month he spent in Belgium. The climax came when he found himself literally overwhelmed by the host of refugees, wounded men, and scattered military units which sought succour in, and, as the iron ring of Kultur drew close, transport from Ostend.