Through the humid dusk came the dull, distant
booming of the unseen guns of conquest in Flanders.
That was the only answer.
A CITY OF REFUGE
In the dark autumn of 1914 the City sprang up almost in a night,
as if by enchantment.
It was white magic that called it into being--the deep, quiet,
strong impulse of compassion and protection that moved the motherly
heart of Holland when she saw the hundreds of thousands of Belgian
fugitives pouring out of their bleeding, ravaged land, and running,
stumbling, creeping on hands and knees, blindly, instinctively
turning to her for safety and help.
"Come to me," she said, like a good woman who holds out her arms and
spreads her knees to make a lap for tired and frightened children,
"come to me. I will take care of you. You shall be safe with me."
All doors were open. The little brick farmhouses and cottages with
their gayly painted window-shutters; the long rows of city houses
with their steep gables; the prim and placid country mansions set
among their high trees and formal flower-gardens--all kinds of
dwellings, from the poorest to the richest, welcomed these guests
of sorrow and distress.
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