The small force of Americans required to oversee the transit must watch that the Germans did not take any of the food and retain both British and German confidence in the absolute good faith of their intentions.  The volunteers were paid their expenses; the rest of their reward was experience, and it was “soom expeerience,” as a Belgian said who was learning a little American slang.  They talked about canal-boat cargoes as if they had been from Buffalo to Albany on the Erie Canal for years; they spoke of “my province” and compared bread-lines and the efficiency of local officials.  And the Germans took none of the food; orders from Berlin were obeyed.  Berlin knew that any requisitioning of relief supplies meant that the Relief Commission would cease work and announce to the world the reason.

However many times Americans were arrested they must be patient.  That exception who said, when he was put in a cell overnight because he entered the military zone by mistake, that he would not have been treated that way in England, needed a little more coaching in preserving his mask of neutrality.  For I must say that nine out of ten of these young men, leaning over backward to be neutral, were pro-Ally, including some with German names.  But publicly you could hardly get an admission out of them that there was any war.  As for Harvard, 1914, hang a passport carrier around the Sphinx’s neck and you have him done in stone.

Fancy any Belgian trying to get him to carry a contraband letter or a German commander trying to work him for a few sacks of flour!  When I asked him what career he had chosen he said, “Business!” without any waste of words.  I think that he will succeed in a way to surprise his family.  It is he and all those young Americans of whom he is a type, as distinctive of America in manner, looks, and thought as a Frenchman is of France or a German of Germany, who carried the torch of Peace’s kindly work into war-ridden Belgium.  They made you want to tickle the eagle on the throat so he would let out a gentle, well-modulated scream; of course, strictly in keeping with neutrality.

Red lanterns took the place of red flags swung by Landsturm sentries on the run to Brussels as darkness fell.  There was no relaxation of watchfulness at night.

All the twenty-four hours the systematic conquerors held the net tight.  Once when my companion repeated his “Again!” and held out the pass in the lantern’s rays, I broke into a laugh, which excited his curiosity, for you soon get out of the habit of laughing in Belgium.

“It has just occurred to me that my guidebook states that passports are not required in Belgium!” I explained.

The editor of that guidebook will have a busy time before he issues the next edition.  For example, he will have a lot of new information about Malines, whose ruins were revealed by the motor-lamps in shadowy broken walls on either side of the main street.  Other places where less damage had been done were equally silent.  In the smaller towns and villages the population must keep indoors at night; for egress and ingress are more difficult to control there than in large cities, where guards at every corner suffice—­watching, watching, these disciplined pawns of remorselessly efficient militarism; watching every human being in Belgium.