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240 WITH THE GERMAN ARMIES IN THE WEST
into a stone-paved road lined with a close beech wood, where
hardly a ray of the sun penetrated to the ground and where
cool shadows reigned over a bed of fallen leaves. We saw
no German soldiers in this direction, nothing but the hand of
autumn over this unhappy land which had lost its independ-
ence. There were no transport columns to be seen. The only
vehicles on the road were civilian carts. The aristocratic
carriages of the grand monde had disappeared without a
trace, after their owners had removed to other climes.
We have eighteen kilometres to go. Ruins do not meet the
eye until we have travelled some distance into the precincts
of Louvain. The whole city is not wrecked by shells as one
had been led to believe. Hardly a fifth has been destroyed.
But that fifth contained many precious and irreplaceable
buildings, and the loss of the library with its collection of
manuscripts, unless by some happy chance some remnants are
still intact under the ruins, is regrettable in the extreme.
But in the midst of the desolation, like a lonely crag in mid-
ocean, stands the Townhall, that proud monument from the
middle of the fifteenth century with its six slender fretwork
turrets. I walked round the whole building, and with the
best will in the world I was unable to detect a single scratch
in its gorgeously decorated walls. There may, of course, be
an occasional scar from a shell, but if so it escaped my atten-
tion. The German artillery had given a magnificent proof of
its unerring accuracy of aim. It had hit everything round this
building but without injuring as much as a cornice of any of
the six turrets.
The reason of the German bombardment of Louvain is
well known. On entering the town the German troops were
fired on from windows by the civil population, and as there
was no other means of checking this outrageous proceeding,
a few houses were set fire to. When afterwards the German
soldiers used every means in their power to extinguish the
fire in the buildings nearest the Townhall, the francUreurs lay
once more in wait from their ambush. Then things grew
serious. Any other army in the world would have acted in
the same way, and the Germans themselves greatly regretted
that they were compelled against their will to adopt such
measures. From Louvain we proceeded to Malines, a lengthy
trip along the canal joining the two cities, where we were
startled to see the masts of fishing smacks bob up amongst the
I
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