their tunnels, and defied the Germans to come on. Having no army at all in the proper sense of the word, but only a Palace Guard and a military band, they could, of course, do nothing of the kind; and that is how they escaped the fate of the Belgians. But they had no illusions-no faith whatever in the plighted word of the King of Prussia; and they did not scruple to say so during the exciting days of the diplomatic preliminaries. They trusted the French, but the Germans they did not trust. If there is war,' they said, 'the Ger'mans will attack France through Luxemburg. The Prince 'Henri railway line is a German line, and we all know why the 'Germans built it.' The one thing which they did not foresee was the rapidity of German action. They are themselves a leisurely people, as becomes a race given over to the cultivation of roses; and they did not realise all that an attaque brusquée might mean. They pictured the German army concentrating, as well as mobilising, on German soil; and, in spite of their foresight, they were, in the end, taken by surprise, believing, even after the declaration of the Kriegszustand, that they would still have a few days' respite.

I thought so too; and, as I was an invalid, only partially convalescent from an unpleasant illness, I did not hurry to get away. That is how it happened that, living close to the frontier, I actually trod German soil, for a few minutes, after the Kriegszustand had been proclaimed, and might very possibly have been caught and detained there if I had not kept my eyes open.

As I was in the heart of the country, there was little to be seen. A few peasants were standing in a devotional attitude by the roadside, singing Die Wacht am Rhein; but there was no danger of molestation from them. They were ignorant people who hardly understood, as yet, who was the enemy, or what the excitement was about. Presently, however, I saw the glittering helmet of a corpulent gendarme who was toiling laboriously up the hill on a bicycle; and it seemed wiser to retire towards the frontier as he approached. As he drew near he gave me a significant look, which was probably meant as a goodnatured warning. Interpreting it as such, I walked a few yards and so reached neutral ground; and then the gendarme gravely descended from his bicycle, and, with equal gravity, drew a steel chain across the road between him and me.

That was the formal closing of the frontier-a ceremony simultaneously performed on all the roads entering the Grand Duchy from Prussia. A party of Luxemburg citizens who had been motoring that afternoon in Prussia had difficulties on their return. Their car was taken from them at the frontier, and they had to complete their journey on foot.

That was on the Friday. On the Saturday night we heard a report that a Prussian detachment had entered the Grand Duchy, somewhere further to the north, but we could not ascertain whether the rumour was true or false. At about ten o'clock on the Sunday morning the veil was lifted, and we knew what we were in for; excited messengers running up the street with the news: Les Prussiens sont à la gare de Luxembourg.' This at a time when quite a number of tourists were on the hotel terrace, waiting for conveyances which would take them to Luxemburg, en route for France and Belgium. A good many of them started in spite of the obstruction. Those who were bound for Belgium got through, though they had to leave their luggage on the frontier. Those who were bound for France got as far as Luxemburg, but could get no further. I was one of the few who stayed behind; and that is how I came to know rather more than is generally known in England about the Prussian invasion and occupation of Luxemburg.

It turned out to be true that the invasion had begun on the Saturday evening. A Prussian detachment had, in fact, appeared at the railway station of Trois Vierges, called in German Ulflingen, torn up a little of the line, and demanded the surrender of the telegraphic apparatus; and so the first act of war had been committed. The invasion in force, and the occupation of the capital, had been delayed until the small hours of the Sunday morning. It had evidently been intended to confront the Luxemburgers with a fait accompli when they came down to breakfast; but that object was not achieved. Somebody telephoned from Wasserbillig; presumably other people telephoned from other stations. At any rate, it became known that an armoured train was on its way from Trier, and that a stream of Prussian soldiers in motors, on motor-cycles, and on bicycles, was pouring along the high road in the dark. Luxemburg had to make up its mind in a hurry how to act.

Mr. Buchan, in his history of the war, states that 'the Grand 'Duchess motored up and wheeled her car across the roadway,

'but she was bidden to go home, and her chauffeur was compelled to turn. One of the Ministers of State made a formal protest, which was greeted with laughter.' The story told on the spot was somewhat different. Two of the officers of the little Luxemburg army, it was stated, were hurriedly sent out with written protests; one of them to meet the motorists, and the other to meet the train. The officer who met the motorists had no chance even of reading his protest; a revolver was pointed at him, and he was told to get out of the way. The protest of the officer who met the train was ignored; he was left reading it while the Prussian officer, who had not even returned his salute, proceeded to take possession of the Post Office.

To get there, he had to traverse the famous Pont Adolf; and it was on that bridge that the Luxemburgers had erected their one and only barricade. The English legend has it that there again they encountered the Grand Duchess in her motor; but, as a matter of fact, the barricade consisted of a prison van of the sort known in France as panier-à-salade and in England as 'Black Maria,' drawn across the road, with a gendarme standing at each end of it. The gendarmes, being able-bodied men, made themselves useful in removing the 'Black Maria.' They served, and could serve, no other purpose; and they were threatened with instant death if they did not obey. The course thus cleared, there was no longer even a show of resistance; and the invaders did what seemed good to them, making haste to issue two proclamations, of which the second gave the lie to the first.

The first proclamation was to the effect that they had only entered the Grand Duchy for the purpose of protecting the railway lines from the French; the second set forth that they found themselves compelled to proceed to the military occupation of the Grand Duchy. There was a further announcement that full compensation would be given for all damage done, and that all goods requisitioned would be paid for in cash; but neither promise has so far been fulfilled. As regards the damage, there has only been a scandalously inadequate payment on account; while it was roughly computed that, of the goods requisitioned, only one-third were paid for in cash. For a further third, it was said, receipts were given, and the rest was simply appropriated without acknowledg

ment. Nor was the manner of the military occupation tempered by consideration for the rights and dignities of the citizens. Soldiers were billeted on them whether they wished it or not. Emplacements for guns were dug in their vegetable gardens, and their orchards were destroyed because they obstructed the line of fire. Their army was confined to its own barracks, and a number of prominent men were arrested.

And not only arrested, but treated badly. I conversed with some of them after their release and heard their stories. They were taken to Trier in circumstances which led the Trier populace to believe that they were convicted spies, with the result that they were followed through the streets of Trier by a mob howling for their blood, and felt relieved when the prison door closed on them. In the prison itself they were treated, not as respectable persons whom it was unfortunately necessary to detain as a measure of military precaution, but as criminals, placed in solitary confinement, provided only with the ordinary prison fare, and required to clean their own cells; when they were let go, as no charge could be brought home to them, they were offered neither compensation nor apology. The record is a damning one, fully bearing out the Prime Minister's estimate of the Prussian character: 'Ce sont 'les derniers des cochons.'

Meanwhile the army was pouring into the Grand Duchy, and pouring out again in the directions of Belgium and France. War had not yet been declared when the military occupation began; and some days elapsed before we, in the country, knew for certain whether war was actually being waged or not. The negotiations were still, so far as we could tell, proceeding; and we clung to the hope that a satisfactory result would come of them. At last, however, we got the truth from a staff officer —a fat little man with enormous goggles who came into the hotel garden and called for beer and cigars. Our landlady stood beside him while he imbibed, and told him what was in our minds. It was as though lightning flashed at her through his goggles. Nein, es ist los,' he said ferociously; and then we knew where we were, and waited to see what would happen next. But nothing in particular happened, except that we heard a good deal about the movements of the troops, and had opportunities of quiet conversation with a good many of the soldiers who were stationed in our village, or passed through it.

Most of them belonged to the Landwehr, and came from villages in the immediate neighbourhood, assembled in such haste that comparatively few of them were even in uniform; the others merely wearing forage caps and having white badges stitched to the sleeves of their mufti. There were many of them who had friends, and even relatives, in our community; so that the atmosphere, as yet, was hardly the atmosphere of war. Both their behaviour and their reception were friendly, and cordial greetings were exchanged. They belonged to the class which has everything to lose and nothing to gain from war, and they knew it, and, being among friends, did not scruple to say so. They had no quarrel with the French, they said,-none whatever; and their mental equipment, of course, owed nothing to the writings of Treitschke and Bernhardi. So far as they had any ideas at all about the origin of the quarrel, they vaguely believed that Russia had begun it; and they were frankly appalled by all that they had heard about the magnitude of the struggle. I discussed the matter myself with three lumbering peasants who came into the café for beer, and were quite willing that an enemy should treat them. Their reluctance to leave their own families was much greater than their desire to bring trouble to other families in other lands. They blamed those whom they called die Regierungsleute; and they exclaimed, with looks of apprehension, and even horror: 'Es ist ein Weltkrieg; es 'ist schrecklich.'

Nor was it only among these local peasants that one found the war unpopular. Several batteries of Saxon artillery passed, one day, up our village street, and were allowed to halt for half an hour and refresh themselves. To most of them refreshments were carried out on trays; but a considerable number of the bolder of them penetrated into the kitchen of our hotel, and made rather a long stay there. We naturally inquired afterwards what they had done and said. Their talk, it seemed, had been, not of glory and conquest, but of their distress at leaving wives and children whom they hardly expected to see again. They had given vent to their emotions to the extent of weeping on the shoulders of the cook-one gallant Saxon head on each shoulder of the comely and sympathetic Luxembourgeoise, while other Saxon warriors stood en queue awaiting their turn to pour out the tale of their