From what I saw of him I judged that the military governor of Brussels, Major Bayer, was not only a diplomat but a kindly and an engaging gentleman.  Certainly he was wrestling most manfully, and I thought tactfully, with a difficult and a dangerous situation.  For one thing, he was keeping his soldiers out of sight as much as possible without relaxing his grip on the community.  He did this, he said, to reduce the chances of friction between his men and the people; for friction might mean a spark and a spark might mean a conflagration, and that would mean another and greater Louvain.  We could easily understand that small things might readily grow into great and serious troubles.  Even the most docile-minded man would be apt to resent in the wearer of a hated uniform what he might excuse as over-officiousness or love of petty authority were the offender a policeman of his own nationality.  Brooding over their own misfortunes had worn the nerves of these captives to the very quick.

In any event, be the outcome of this war what it may, I do not believe the Belgians can ever be molded, either by kindness or by sternness, into a tractable vassal race.  German civilization I concede to be a magnificent thing—­for a German; but it seems to press on an alien neck as a galling yoke.  Belgium under Berlin rule would be, I am sure, Alsace and Lorraine all over again on a larger scale, and an unhappier one.  She would never, in my humble opinion, be a star in the Prussian constellation, but always a raw sore in the Prussian side.

In Major Bayer’s office I saw the major stamp an order that turned over to the acting burgomaster ten thousand bags of flour for distribution among the more needy citizens.  We were encouraged to believe that this was by way of a free gift from the German Government.  It may have been made without payment or promise of payment.  In regard to that I cannot say positively; but this was the inference we drew from the statements of the German officers who took part in the proceeding.  As for the acting burgomaster, he stood through the scene silent and inscrutable, saying nothing at all.  Possibly he did not understand; the conversation—­or that part of it which concerned us—­was carried on exclusively in English.  His face, as he bowed to accept the certified warrant for the flour, gave us no hint of his mental processes.

Major Bayer claimed a professional kinship with those of us who were newspaper men, as he was the head of the Boy Scout movement in Germany and edited the official organ of the Boy Scouts.  He had a squad of his scouts on messenger duty at his headquarters—­smart, alert-looking youngsters.  They seemed to me to be much more competent in their department than were the important-appearing German Secret Service agents who infested the building.  The Germans may make first-rate spies—­assuredly their system of espionage was well organized before the war broke out—­but I do not think they are conspicuous successes as detectives:  their methods are so delightfully translucent.