As soon as the Germans were near the coast they began to fortify it most formidably, in order to prevent eventual attempts at landing by hostile troops. Guns were soon mounted in the dunes, as I noticed during a trip which I made along the coast on Sunday, October 25th. Heyst was occupied by a small division of marines, although a few days before the garrison had been larger, but on Saturday evening all soldiers along the coast had been alarmed, and most of them were ordered to proceed to the battle-field near Nieuwpoort, where matters were at the time less favourable for the Germans. Near the dyke I found five pieces of ordnance mounted, their mouths turned towards the sea, and that they were quite right in taking precautions was proved by the men-of-war riding on the distant horizon, without motion. In the centre of the town I was detained by three sailors, who called out an angry "Halt!" seized my bicycle, and made me a prisoner, "because I was an Englishman." Happily I could prove the contrary by my papers; and the permit of the Bruges commander to go about on a bicycle made them return it. There was a general complaint in that district about the very arbitrary requisitions: for example, beds and blankets were extensively taken away from the convents, a thing against which the burgomaster of Bruges had already protested. Horses, cows, and other cattle were simply taken from the stables and the meadows, and paid for with paper promises. At Zeebrugge the conditions were not alarming. The houses of those who had gone away, however, had been damaged most terribly, and looted. Round the harbour guns were mounted, guarded by many sentries. I was at first forbidden to cross the canal bridge, but my excellent credentials at length made the sentries give in. Everything indicated that already during the first days of the occupation the Germans had begun to execute their plan to turn Zeebrugge into a station for submarines. The commander ruled with a strong hand. They issued not only the usual proclamations about introducing German time, but the commander went even so far as to dictate at what hour the Holy Masses had to be said. In one of the proclamations I read, for example, that in future the Mass of six o'clock, Belgian time, had to be said at the same hour German time. Another proclamation said that skippers were forbidden to sail, and that all boats, including fisher-boats, had been seized. In the dunes near Ostend I came across a level field fenced off by the military, and in the centre I saw a large company of superior officers, and a marine band. They were arranged round three big caves, into which just then had been lowered nine military officers and ordinary soldiers, who died in the nearly completed new Military Hospital of Ostend in the neighbourhood.