Though most of the actual fighting took place outside the old fortification near the new fortresses, at about three miles' distance from the town, some of the old seventeenth-century forts have received their share of shells, and do not seem to have done at all badly, considering the very modern artillery which has beaten them.
Antwerp has lost more than three-quarters of its usual population, a large part of which joined the army or escaped to Holland and England. That is why, perhaps, foodstuff is still comparatively cheap here, and everything except bread and vegetables seems fairly plentiful. Flour is very scarce, and all sort of ingredients are used in its place.
Curiously enough, while bread is scarce and very bad even in the best restaurants, and while in most villages people are forbidden to buy more than a small ration per head, confectioners' shops are full of cakes and sweets of all descriptions. I could not help thinking of the words attributed to a fine lady of France: "Il n'y a plus de pain? Pourquoi ne mangent-ils pas de la brioche?"
As for vegetables, the Belgian gardens have been completely swamped by the inundations, and the produce imported from Germany does not seem to go very far.
There has been apparently a quiet exodus of works of art from Antwerp's famous museums to Germany, though apparently most of the Rubens, Rembrandts, Van Dycks, and Teniers, which were the gems of the Antwerp collections, were taken away before the arrival of the Huns, and are said to be now in a very safe place. Some of the remainder have now found their way to Germany. By the way, some of the rarest specimens of the Zoo animals have shared the fate of the old masters, and now languish behind alien bars.
The town is infested with spies, who are relentlessly hunting down Frenchmen and Englishmen. As a matter of fact, everyone who comes into Belgium is provided straight away with a sort of guardian angel, who very often does not leave him for many days, and possibly not before he has given him some trouble with the German Kommandantur.
This has happened to me, as I will relate later on, and also to most American and Dutch subjects who get into Belgium at the present moment.