A boy straining to push a wheelbarrow with his pale mother in it, and his two little sisters trudging at his side. A peasant with his two girls driving their lean, dejected cows back to some unknown pasture. A bony horse tugging at a wagon heaped high with bedding and household gear, on top of which sat the wrinkled grandmother with the tiniest baby in her arms, while the rest of the family stumbled alongside--and the cat was curled up on the softest coverlet in the wagon. Two panting dogs, with red tongues hanging out, and splayed feet clawing the road, tugging a heavy-laden cart while the master pushed behind and the woman pulled in the shafts. Strange, antique vehicles crammed with passengers. Couples and groups and sometimes larger companies of foot-travellers. Now and then a solitary man or woman, old and shabby, bundle on back, eyes on the road, plodding through the mud and the mist, under the high archway of yellowing leaves. [Illustration: All were fugitives, anxious to be gone, ... and making no more speed than a creeping snail's pace of unutterable fatigue.] All these distinct pictures I saw, yet it was all one vision--a vision of humanity with its dumb companions in flight--infinitely slow, painful, pitiful flight! I saw no tears, I heard no cries of complaint. But beneath the numb and patient haste on all those dazed faces I saw a question. _“What have we done? Why has this thing come upon us and our children?”_ Somewhere I heard a trumpet blown. The brazen spikes on the helmets of a little troop of German soldiers flashed for an instant, far down the sloppy road. Through the humid dusk came the dull, distant booming of the unseen guns of conquest in Flanders. That was the only answer. A CITY OF REFUGE In the dark autumn of 1914 the City sprang up almost in a night, as if by enchantment. It was white magic that called it into being--the deep, quiet, strong impulse of compassion and protection that moved the motherly heart of Holland when she saw the hundreds of thousands of Belgian fugitives pouring out of their bleeding, ravaged land, and running, stumbling, creeping on hands and knees, blindly, instinctively turning to her for safety and help. “Come to me,” she said, like a good woman who holds out her arms and spreads her knees to make a lap for tired and frightened children, “come to me. I will take care of you. You shall be safe with me.”