help and buy his supplies from Germany. He refused, for practical
as well as for sentimental reasons. If he had consented, think what
the Belgians would have done to him after the Germans were gone!
However, officers were gradually returning, for this was the best
hotel in town, and even conquerors are human and German conquerors
have particularly human stomachs.




IX
Christmas In Belgium



Christmas in Belgium with the bayonet and the wolf at the door taught
me to value Christmas at home for more than its gifts and the cheer
of the fireside. It taught me what it meant to belong to a free people
and how precious is that old English saying that a man's house is his
castle, which was the inception of so much in our lives which we
accept as a commonplace. If such a commonplace can be made
secure only by fighting, then it is best to fight. At any time a foreign
soldier might enter the house of a Belgian and take him away for trial
before a military court.

Breakfast in the same restaurant as before the city's fall! Again the
big grapes which are a luxury of the rich man's table or an
extravagance for a sick friend with us! The hothouses still grew them.
What else was there for he hothouses to do, though the export of
their products was impossible? A shortage of the long, white-leafed