"I had not thought of it in that way!" said the officer.

Indeed, it is very hard for any conqueror to think of it in that way. So
the picture remained on the wall.

How many soldiers would it take to enforce the regulation that no
Belgian was to wear the Belgian colours? Imagine thousands and
thousands of Landsturm men moving about and plucking King
Albert's face or the black, yellow and red from Belgian buttonholes!
No sooner would a buttonhole be cleared in front than the emblem
would appear in a buttonhole in the rear. The Landsturm would face
counter, flank, frontal, and rear attacks in a most amusing military
manoeuvre, which would put those middle-aged conquerors fearfully
out of breath and be rare sport for the Belgians. You could not arrest
the whole population and lead them off to jail; and if you bayoneted a
few--which really those phlegmatic, comfortable old Landsturms
would not have the heart to do for such a little thing--why, it would get
into the American Press, and the Berlin Foreign Office would say:

"There you are, you soldiers, breaking all the crockery again!"

In the smaller towns, where the Germans were billeted in Belgian
houses, of course the hosts had to serve their unwelcome guests.

"Yet we managed to let them know what was in our hearts," said one
woman. "Some tried to be friendly. They said they had wives and
children at home; and we said: 'How glad your wives and children
would be to see you! Why don't you go home?'"

When a report reached the commander in Ghent that an old man had