"Each regiment was headed by its field music and colours, and when darkness fell and the street lamps were lighted, the shrill music of fifes, the rattle of drums, and the tramp of marching feet reminded me of a torchlight parade. Hard on the heels of the infantry rumbled artillery, battery after battery, until one wondered where Krupp found time or steel to make them. These were the forces that had been almost in constant action for the last two weeks, and that for thirty-six hours had poured death and destruction into the city; yet the horses were well groomed and the harness well polished. Behind the field batteries rumbled quick-firers, and then, heralded by a blare of trumpets and the crash of kettledrums, came the cavalry, cuirassiers in helmets and breastplates of burnished steel, hussars in befrogged jackets and fur busbies, and finally the Uhlans, riding amid forests of lances under a cloud of fluttering pennons. But this was not all nor nearly all. For after the Uhlans came bluejackets of the naval division, broad-shouldered, bewhiskered fellows, with caps worn rakishly and the roll of the sea in their gait. Then Bavarian infantry in dark blue, Saxon infantry in light blue, and Austrians in uniforms of beautiful silver-gray, and last of all a detachment of gendarmes in silver and bottle-green." [Illustration: Antwerp under Bombardment. (_From the picture by Cyrus Cuneo._)] * * * * * The curtain descends upon the tragedy of Antwerp, and as we rise from its contemplation two pictures remain fixed in our memories--the one, a march of triumph, with all the pomp and circumstance of war, the fanfare of trumpets, the rattle of drums, the gay uniforms, the gallant chargers, the nodding plumes, the stir and movement of victorious legions; the other, long, long trails of anguished men, distraught women, and sobbing children, bereft at one stroke of home, kindred, and possessions, driven forth to perish of hunger by the wayside, to begin life anew as exiles in a foreign land, or to return to their ruined homes as the subjects of a pitiless conqueror. Never were the terrible contrasts of war thrown into sharper relief; never was the ruthlessness of armed strife so painfully brought home to the onlooking world. A mighty nation, drunk with the lust of empire, had trampled to ruin a little, toiling people, innocent of offence in the sight of God and man. It had dared to defend itself, and for this heinous crime an overwhelming foe "slew their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary, and had no compassion upon young man or maiden, old man or him that stooped for age." The blare of trumpets and the roll of drums may stop the ears of men to every cry of agony, and deaden their hearts to every impulse of mercy; but they can avail nothing before Him who has said, "Vengeance is mine; I will repay."