The City of Brussels had issued vouchers to an amount of twenty million francs for the purchase of food. The German governor, in spite of prior agreement, stopped the distribution of food rations, in order to obtain an extra tax of thirty million franes, whereupon Burgomaster Max warned all banks that the City mo longer guaranteed its bonds. This time he was arrested. On September 26, 1914 he was sent first to Namur, whence he was later transferred to Celle-Schloss, Cologne, Glatz, Berlin and Goslar.
From Goslar he succeeded in escaping, on November 13, 1918, with the aid of a false passport, written by himself on a sheet of official note-paper from the Police Commissary's lown office. He reached Brussels safely two days later and was given a delirious reception when he appeared in public on Sunday, November 16.
Burgomaster Max was born in Brussels on December 31, 1869, He "was educated at the Athenée Royal de Bruxelles and at the University of Brussels, where he took his degree of Doctor of Law at the age of twenty. He then joined the staff of the newspaper "La Liberté with M. Paul Hymans, and was one of the founders of the Jeune Garde de la Ligue Libérale Journaliste, Tu 1894, he was elected a provincial councillor, and nine years later a municipal counciller of the city of Brussels, In 1908, he became Sheriff of Public Charities for Brussels and founded the Inter-Suburban Fund for the unemployed. In the following year, on the death of M. de Mot, he was elected Burgomaster of Brussels three weeks before, his fortieth birth-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.