They had credit, and in the banks they had money, but they could not get at the money; and when a chateau and a farmhouse are in flames, between them there is little choice.
Three hours after midnight on the day the Germans began their three days' march through Brussels I had crossed the Square Rogier to send a despatch by one of the many last trains for Ostend.

When I returned to the Palace Hotel, seated on the iron chairs on the sidewalk were a woman, her three children, and two maid servants.
The woman was in mourning, which was quite new, for, though the war was only a month old, many had been killed, among them her husband.

The day before, at Tirlemont, shells had destroyed her chateau, and she was on her way to England.

She had around her neck two long strings of pearls, the maids each held a small hand- bag, her boy clasped in his arms a forlorn and sleepy fox-terrier, and each of the little girls was embracing a bird-cage.

In one was a canary, in the other a parrot.