Here Holland opened out her arms. The kindness of the Dutch--as yet personal, unorganized endeavor--was beyond conception. Churches, houses, public halls, stations were thrown open to the multitude. You saw hundreds of Dutch soldiers join in the procession, lift babies and bundles, and walk with them for miles. At Dordrecht, when the trains came through, peasants passed scores of babies' milk-bottles into the cars. When a jolly-looking Dutch girl, with a great big gleaming smile that reminded me of some one, gave me milk and chocolate, the tears began to trickle down my cheeks. I suppose it was the reaction, or because I was tired, or, perhaps, because the crowd was cheering and waving at us. For the others there were piles of bread, Dutch cake, and, best of all, some good, long drinks of water. For ten days Antwerp's water supply had been cut off. Von Beseler, German siege commander, had seen to that. At Bergen op Zoom and Roosendaal people used the walls of the houses for post-offices. They wrote their names in chalk letters, giving directions to relatives lost in the scramble. After ox carts, rowboats, and river barges had done their share, a Dutch-Belgian "Stoom Tram" joggled us along for a few miles. Some more walking and a little running before I at last crawled aboard a twenty-car freight and passenger train moving slowly toward the east. At the first telegraph office across the Dutch border, I filed a cable story to the "Boston Journal"; and later started an account for the "New York Evening Post." I had an idea that I would score a "beat" or "scoop" so that the people of the Back Bay could read of Antwerp's fall over their coffee-cups the next morning. My cable account had too much inside information. There were in it too many facts concerning Winston Churchill's visit, also information about the number of Royal Marines engaged, none of which it was thought proper to give out at that time. So the English censor refused to let it through. That, however, did not prevent the Dutch Cable Company from pocketing my two hundred guilders. By the time I reached Rotterdam the word "refugee" had assumed a new and altogether nearer meaning. I had been in a besieged and captured city; I had mixed with homeless and starving people; I had seen houses crumble and burn; and ghastly human figures with their insides oozing away and the eyes staring vacantly. As I lay in bed that night I could hear, and I still can hear, the scruff, scruff, and shuffle of feet as the compact body of this army--the army without guns or leaders--dragged slowly past my window at the Queen's, the tinkle of ox-cart bells, the talk and babble of guttural tongues; the curses of the team drivers, the frantic cries of mothers who had lost their children in the scramble, the cries of young children who didn't know what was wrong, but realized in their vague, childish way that something terrible was happening.