The irony of history again!  It was this German folk who said, centuries ago:  “No religious authority shall invade the sacred precincts of the soul and compel men to act counter to their deepest convictions.”  In a costly struggle the fetters of the church were broken.  But now a new iron despotism is riveted upon them.  The great state has become the keeper of men’s consciences.  The dragooning of the soul goes on just the same.  Only the power to do it has been transferred from the priests to the officers of the state.  To compel men to kill when their whole beings cry out against it, is an atrocity upon the souls of men as real as any committed upon the bodies of the Belgians.

Amidst the wild exploits and wilder rumors of those crucial days when Belgium was the central figure in the world-war, the calmness of the natives was a source of constant wonder.  In the regions where the Germans had not yet come they went on with their accustomed round of eating, drinking and trading with a sang froid that was distressing to the fevered outsider.

Yet beneath this surface calmness and gayety ran a smoldering hate, of whose presence one never dreamed, unless he saw it shoot out in an ugly flare.

I saw this at Antwerp when about 300 of us had been herded into one of the great halls.  As one by one the suspects came up to the exit gate to be overhauled by the examiners, I thought that there never could be such a complacent, dead-souled crowd as this.  They had dully waited for two hours with scarce a murmur.

The most pathetic weather-worn old man—­a farm drudge, I surmise—­came up to the exit.  All I heard were the words of the officer:  “You speak German, eh?”

At a flash this dead throng became an infuriated blood-thirsting mob.  “Allemand!  Espion!” it shouted, swinging forward until the gates sagged.  “Kill him!  Kill the damned German!”

The mob would have put its own demand into execution but for the soldiers, who flung the poor quivering fellow into one corner and pushed back the Belgians, eager to trample him to the station floor.

There was the girl Yvonne, who, while the color was mounting to her pretty face, informed us that she “wanted the soldiers to keel every German in the world.  No,” she added, her dark eyes snapping fire, “I want them to leave just one.  The last one I shall keel myself!”

Yet, every example of Belgian ferocity towards the spoilers one could match with ten of Belgian magnanimity.  We obtained a picture of Max Crepin, carbinier voluntaire, in which he looks seventy years of age—­he was really seventeen.  At the battle of Melle he had fallen into the hands of the Germans after a bullet had passed clean through both cheeks.  In their retreat the Germans had left Max in the bushes, and he was now safe with his friends.

He could not speak, but the first thing he wrote in the little book the nurse handed him was, “The Germans were very kind to me.”  There was a line about his father and mother; then “We had to lie flat in the bushes for two days.  One German took off his coat and wrapped it around me, though he was cold himself.  Another German gave me all the water in his canteen.”  Then came a line about a friend, and finally:  “The Germans were very kind to me.”  I fear that Max would not rank high among the haters.