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MORE DAYS IN ANTWERP 243
Another guest was Privy Councillor Kreidel, head of the
commissariat department of the Governor-General of Belgium,
and seventy-five years old. He had recently been subject
to attacks of dizziness through overwork and was now
on the point of returning to Germany to get strong again.
The new Governor of Antwerp, Infantry-General Baron
von Hoiningen, whom I had met in Karlsruhe, was also
present. General of Fortilications Bailer, gentle and charming
lecturer on aesthetics, was one of my special friends. He was
in very good spirits to-day because he had seen his son of
whom he had not heard for a long time and who served with
one of the armies in France. Lieutenant Bailer had made the
long journey through the air and was just on the point of
returning in his aeroplane. We also talked about Ghent,
which had fallen the same day after severe fighting in the
open country. The General was now proceeding thither to
study the Belgian field fortifications ; the town itself is not
fortified. From Ghent the German army was to continue to
Bruges and Ostend. Finally we talked about the 300,000
volunteers who had just arrived at the front, where the youth-
ful undergraduates with their merry pranks had greatly en-
livened the older Landsturm men, who in turn had taught
them their very best drill.
The next two days I rested, wrote, visited the Swedish
Legation and spent my evenings with the Governor-General.
The weather was by no means suitable for excursions. The
rain poured down and heavy clouds from the Atlantic floated
over the town. As a lady whom I overheard in a shop rightly
observed, life was quite dark and sad enough without the
heavens adding their share. But to the soldiers there is no
difference between fine and foul weather, and the troops
and transport trains passing through the city seem no fewer
than usual. But for the German uniforms and military cars,
one would scarcely have known what was going on. Apart
from these phenomena, a stranger arriving in Brussels would
have noticed nothing, unless it be the absence of Belgian
motor-cars and the rarity of horse-drawn vehicles ; for both
cars and horses had been requisitioned by ’the Belgian army.
He might perhaps also have wondered where all the beau
monde and all the rich and well-to-do citizens had got to, for
those who could afford it had preferred to betake themselves
elsewhere, rather than to remain under the foreign yoke. It
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