a saving in soldiers, only aggravated to the Belgian the regulations
directed against his personal freedom.

"Eat, drink, and live as usual. Go to your own police courts for
misdemeanours," was the German edict in a word; "but remember
that ours is the military power, and no act that aids the enemy, that
helps the cause of Belgium in this war, is permitted. Observe that
particular affiche about a spy, please. He was shot."

At every opportunity Belgians were told that the British and the
French could never come to their rescue. The Allies were beaten. It
was the British who got Belgium into trouble; the British who were
responsible for the idleness, the penury, the hunger and the suffering
in Belgium. The British had used Belgium as a cat's-paw; then they
had deserted her. But Belgians remained mostly unconvinced. They
were making war with mind and spirit, if not with arms.

"We know how to suffer in Belgium," said a Belgian jurist. "Our ability
to suffer and to hold fast to our hearths has kept us going through the
centuries. Flemish and French, we have stubbornness in common.
Now a ruffian has come into our house and taken us by the throat. He
can choke us to death, or he can slowly starve us to death, but he
cannot make us yield. No, we shall never forgive!"

"You too hate, then?" I asked.

"Of course I hate. For the first time in my life I know what it is to hate;
and so do my countrymen. I begin to enjoy my hate. It is one of the
privileges of our present existence. We cannot stand on chairs and
tables as they do in Berlin cafés and sing our hate, but no one can