WAR LECTURE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 2049, 1 November 1919, Page 3

WAR LECTURE.

At the Town Hall on Thursday evening, Louise Mack, V.A.D., war correspondent and lecturer, recounted to an interested audience the story of her experiences in Antwerp and Brussels at the outset of the war. Miss Mack is a fluent speaker with a bent for graphic description and a memory for interesting detail, all of which combine to hold her audience throughout the recital. Miss Mack commenced by describing how she became a war correspondent —the only woman war correspondent in Antwerp at the time of the German occupation. She then described with a wealth of detail the flight of the Belgian population into Antwerp and- again out of it when (he Germans were to bombard the town. She spoke in the highest terms of the gallantry of the Belgian people, claiming that (hey were worthy of all that British peo-ple-had done for them. She related the story of the coming to Antwerp of Winston Churchill and his 5,000 mdn; the 30 hours’ bombardment of the city and the heroic defence of the gallant baud of men who kept 200,000 Germans at bay for Jive days; her experiences as a V.A.D. nurse in motoring wounded men from the lines under shell fire; the cessation of the bombardment, and the final occupation of the city by the German hordes. In this part her lecture, Miss Mack pays a wonderful tribute to the old-ladies of Antwerp, who stuck by the wounded when even the nurses had left the hospitals. After watching the of the Germans into Antwerp, Miss Mack intended to escape, but found that live minutes after the occupation all means of escape were shut off, and she proceeds to toll how the Huns marched into (he city in' one long grey line decorated with (lowers, and singing “The* Watch on (he Rhine,” the whole making a wonderful pageant. She then relates how at first the Germans behaved like lambs in accordance with their commands, and endeavoured to make themselves popular with the Belgian population, and bow 'afterwards they became brutes and cruelly maltreated the civilian people—men, women and children.

In another part of her lecture, Aiiss Alack describes the conditions in Brussels during the German occupation of that city; how disguised as a peasant she went there to interview Max, (lie heroic mayor of the city, who defied the Germans till the last; how lie disappeared the day after site had seen him, and how she met (here, and spent two hours with, Nurse (’aveil, the greatest woman uiartvr of the war.

After the iuai.ii lecture, .Miss Alack showed a series of interesting moving pictures and lantern slides depicting various phases of the wai' in the early stages.