Emotions changed from hour to hour, but when the Civic Guard left for the front, amid demonstrations of patriotic fervour, it was the common belief that the forces of Belgium might successfully keep off the enemy, at any rate until aid arrived. Barricades were built across the streets, and lines of trenches thrown up. Brussels resigned itself to the prospect of a siege. Little did the crowds who discussed these events know of the real purpose of them. Under present-day conditions of warfare Brussels is wholly indefensible. It lies for the most part in a hollow commanded by hills from which long-range guns could destroy it without the possibility of effective reply. The object of the apparent preparations for a siege was to mislead, not the citizens of Brussels, but the foe who had trampled on the nation’s rights. The Government and the authorities in Brussels were well aware of the enemy’s swarm of spies in their midst. They were not ignorant that their every movement was forthwith betrayed. A wireless installation discovered on the building lately occupied by the German Ministry had been unearthed and dismantled, but there were still, doubtless, secret channels of communication open. Rightly concluding that German plans would be adjusted to this information, they met ruse with ruse. The enemy was to be led on to an empty and merely theatrical triumph. Of course, the ordinary citizen, not in the secret, took the siege preparations at their face value. The German advance was evidenced, apart from reports and rumours, by the crowds of homeless fugitives, who like flotsam driven before a storm, tramped into the city footsore, weary, and miserable, their few belongings, hastily snatched together, carried on their backs, or piled on the light carts drawn by dogs. At first in bands, the inflow swelled until these pitiful processions filled every eastern and south-eastern road; and soon the railway stations were crowded by people struggling for trains to the coast. Then came ambulances and trains of wounded. On the night of Thursday, August 20, Brussels did not go to bed. News arrived in the early hours that the Germans were close upon the city. From their posts in the Forest of Soignies, the Civic Guard marched in. It became known that they had been ordered to Ghent, and that the capital was to be surrendered without firing a shot. The public at large were stunned, and their astonishment was without doubt shared, not in Belgium only, but abroad. Undaunted by the turn of events, the 20,000 men of the Civic Guard passed through the streets _en route_ for Ghent intoning the “Marseillaise” in a thunderous chorus. Meanwhile those responsible wisely kept their counsel. The proclamation that the military evacuation was a measure necessary for the well-being of Brussels itself and of the country was, with judicious suppression as to reasons, the truth.