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CHAPTER XIV
STILL IN ANTWERP
THE i6th of October —an anniversary! Nine years
ago I left Stockholm for Tibet. How quiet and
peaceful the world seemed then, how different from
the thunders now re-echoing from pole to pole. The Russo-
Japanese war had just ended. Now the Russians and Japanese
are friends. Then Count Benckendorff had frowned on Lord
Curzon’s Tibetan policy. But when the storm was preparing
against Germany, and when it broke loose, Russia and Eng-
land suddenly became friends—like Pilate and Herod in their
day!
The i6th of October broke with a leaden sky, and the
German flag hung limp and motionless from the spire of the
cathedral, 123 metres above the ground—where it had now
been fluttering for a whole week. At the entrance facing the
Place Verte stood a middle-aged janitor, with an unspeakably
sour mien. He scarcely deigned to glance at me when, in my
most courteous accents, I asked him whether the cathedral
was open. " The cathedral is open," he replied, " but only
to German soldiers." " All right, my boy," I thought, and
drew forth my open sesame, General von Moltke’s pass.
The janitor read the paper and his face grew longer at every
line. When he had finished he removed his cap and said :
" Is that really true ? If so I may tell you, Doctor, that I am
a Swede, a native of Visby, resident in Antwerp for thirty
years, and my name is Dahlgren."
Thereupon, the cathedral was open even to me, and honest
Dahlgren took me round and explained everything. " Baede-
ker " does not know one-tenth of what he knew. But I will
pass all this over, for this book deals only with the war. All
that I will mention is that only one shell, or more likely per-
haps a fragment of a shell, had struck the wall near the lower
part of the great window above the entrance in Place Verte.
248
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