as if they did not see the sentries; as if no sentries existed.

The Germans said that they wanted to be friendly. They even
expressed surprise that the Belgians would not return their advances.
They sent out invitations to social functions in Brussels, but no one
came--not even to a ball given by the soldiers to the daughters of the
poor. Belgium stared its inhospitality, its contempt, its cynical
drolleries at the invader.

I kept thinking of a story I heard in Alaska of a man who had shown
himself yellow by cheating his partner out of a mine. He appeared
one day hungry at a cabin occupied by half a dozen men who knew
him. They gave him food and a bunk that night; they gave him
breakfast; they even carried his blanket-roll out to his sled and
harnessed his dogs as a hint, and saw him go without one man
having spoken to him. No matter if that man believed he had done no
wrong, he would have needed a rhinoceros hide not to have felt this
silence. Such treatment the Belgians have given to the Germans,
except that they furnished the shelter and harnessed the team under
duress, as they so specifically indicate by every act. No wonder, then,
that the old Landsturm guards, used at home to saying "Wie gehts?"
and getting a cheery answer from the people they passed in the
streets, were lonely.

Not only stubborn, but shrewd, these Belgians. Both qualities were
brought out in the officials who had to deal with the Germans,
particularly in the small towns and where destruction had been worst.
Take, for example, M. Nerincx, of Louvain, who has energy enough to
carry him buoyantly through an American political campaign,
speaking from morning to midnight. He had been in America. I