File No. 763.72/635
The Consul General at Antwerp (Diederich) to the Secretary of State
Antwerp, undated.
[Received August 26, 1914, 7:20 p.m.]
[Telegram]
Your cables 22, 23, 25 August, welfare.1 All communications Belgium save. Ghent, Bruges, and seacoast cut off. Gibson, after two days’ sojourn here, has started back to Brussels this noon. Hope he will get safely through firing lines. Antwerp very calm though almost completely isolated. At outbreak of war excitement was at fever heat and though many German women and children were made to endure cruel hardships by the perhaps too precipitate execution of the expulsion order no bodily harm or injury was done them. I know whereof I speak. In times like these stories of horrible atrocities will crop out everywhere but let Americans keep cool and remember audiatur et altera pars.
- Not printed.↩