"(2) The advantages which would accrue from giving one Belgian officer to each English General Staff, one interpreter to each commanding officer, and gendarmes to each unit of troops, in order to assist the British police troops....
"In the course of another interview Lieut. Col. Barnardiston and I studied the combined operations to take place in the event of a German offensive with Antwerp as its object and under the hypothesis of the German troops marching through our country in order to reach the French Ardennes.
"In this question, the Colonel said he quite agreed with the plan which I had submitted to him, and he assured me also of the approval of Gen. Grierson, Chief of the English General Staff.
"Other secondary questions which were likewise settled had particular reference to intermediary officers, interpreters, gendarmes, maps, photographs of the uniforms, special copies, translated into English, of some Belgian regulations, the regulations concerning the import duties on English provisions, to the accommodation of the wounded of the allied armies, &c. Nothing was resolved on as regards the activity which the Government or the military authorities might exert on the press....
"During the final meetings which I had with the British Attaché, he informed me about the numbers of troops which would be daily disembarked at Boulogne, Calais, and Cherbourg. The distance of the last place, which is necessary for technical considerations, will involve a certain delay. The first corps would be disembarked on the tenth day, and the second on the fifteenth day. Our railways would carry out the transportation so that the arrival of the first corps, either in the direction of Brussels-Louvain or of Namur-Dinant, would be assured on the eleventh day, and that of the second on the sixteenth day.
"I again, for a last time, and as emphatically as I could, insisted on the necessity of hastening the sea transports so that the English troops could be with us between the eleventh and twelfth day. The happiest and most favorable results can be reached by a convergent and simultaneous action of the allied forces. But if that co-operation should not take place, the failure would be most serious. Col. Barnardiston assured me that everything serving to this end would be done....
"In the course of our conversations, I had occasion to convince the British Military Attaché that we were willing, so far as possible, to thwart the movements of the enemy and not to take refuge in Antwerp from the beginning.
"Lieut. Col. Barnardiston on his part told me that, at the time, he had little hope for any support or intervention on the part of Holland. At the same time he informed me that his Government intended to transfer the basis of the British commissariat from the French coast to Antwerp as soon as all German ships were swept off the North Sea....
"In all our conversations the Colonel regularly informed me about the secret news which he had concerning the military circumstances and the situation of our eastern neighbors, &c. At the same time he emphasized that Belgium was under the imperative necessity to keep herself constantly informed of the happenings in the adjoining Rhinelands. I had to admit that with us the surveillance service abroad was, in times of peace, not directly in the hands of the General Staff, as our legations had no Military Attachés. But I was careful not to admit that I did not know whether the espionage service which is prescribed in our regulations was in working order or not. But I consider it my duty to point out this position which places us in a state of evident inferiority to our neighbors, our presumable enemies.
"Major General, Chief of the General Staff. (Initials of Gen. Ducarme.)