To return to Antwerp. The city has long been dear to many English people, and it is very easily reached from our shores. Perhaps that is one reason why it has been a favourite holiday place for a great many years. When the news came that it was to be fiercely attacked by the enemy, a wave of sorrow swept through our country. It is a beautiful town, and the steeple of the Cathedral is so exquisite, so delicately lovely in design, as to have become one of the wonders of the world. Napoleon, who was not apt to admire fine architecture, said it was like a piece of old Mechlin lace. Antwerp is a city of churches, and in each church there are wonderful paintings, many of them the work of men born in the city itself. The most delightful of Flemish painters was Quentin Matsys. He began life as a blacksmith, and the city possesses some fine ironwork done by him in youth. Fortunately for the world, he fell in love with an artist’s daughter. The artist would not give his daughter to a blacksmith, and declared that she _must_ marry a painter. So Quentin Matsys immediately began to paint, and he very soon painted much better than his future father-inlaw! In the Cathedral is a tablet to his memory on which are inscribed the words: “’Twas love connubial taught the smith to paint.” Antwerp has always been one of the fighting fortresses of the world. We must, however, remember that it was far easier to defend the little old Antwerp of the Middle Ages than the big modern city. I think the most interesting thing about the Antwerp of the past is that Godfrey de Bouillon, of whom I am sure some of you must have heard, started from there for the Holy Land, where he was to die bearing the fine title of “Baron and Defender of the Holy Sepulchre.” Antwerp went through many terrible trials before this last siege—in fact, so cruelly was it treated about five hundred years ago that the episode still lives in history as “the Spanish Fury.” In the middle of the French Revolution Antwerp became French. Napoleon delighted in its possession, and uttered the famous words, “Antwerp is a pistol aimed at the heart of England!” He found it, however, as we believe the Germans will find it, of as little or of as much use as an unloaded pistol; and in due course he had to give it up, just as the Germans will have to give it up. It is strange now to reflect that a British Army besieged Antwerp in 1814, when it was splendidly defended by the French. War is full of curious, funny, and terrible incidents.