gallons of gasolene were poured on the ground, and everybody watched the
church tower for the red flag which would signal that firing was about
to begin. Le Bien Public of Ghent, however, protested stoutly because
its mail edition had been refused at the station:

It is not alone on the field of battle that one must be brave. For us
civilians real courage consists in doing our ordinary duty up to the
last. In Limburg postmen made their rounds while Prussians inundated the
region, and peasants went right along with their sowing while down the
road troops were falling back from the firing-line.

Let us think of our sons sleeping forever down there in the trenches of
Haelen and Tirlemont and Aerschot; of those brave artillerymen who, for
twenty days, have been waiting in the forts at Liege the help so many
times promised from the allies; of our lancers charging into
mitrailleuse-fire as if they were in a tournament; let us remember that
our heroic little infantrymen, crouched behind a hedge or in a trench,
keeping up their fire for ten hours running until their ammunition was
exhausted, and forced at last to retire, wounded and worn out, without a
chief to take orders from, have had no other thought than that of
finding some burgomaster or commissioner of police, in order not to be
taken for deserters. Let us think a little of all these brave men and
be worthy of them.

There were no music-halls in Belgium and there were posters on the blank
walla, even of little villages, reminding bands and hurdy-gurdy players
and the proprietors of dance-halls that this was no time for unnecessary
noise. There were no soldiers going gayly off to war; the Belgians were
coming back from war. They had been asked to hold out for three days,
and they had held for three weeks. All their little country was a