Pop-eyed children, ruddy-cheeked, aggressive children, pinched-faced children, kept warm by sweaters that some American or English children spared, happy in that they did not know what their elders knew!  Not the danger of physical starvation so much as the actual presence of mental starvation was the thing that got on your nerves in a land where the sun is seldom seen in winter and rainy days are the rule.  It was bad enough in the “zone of occupation,” so called, a line running from Antwerp past Brussels to Mons. One could guess what it was like in the military zone to the westward, where only an occasional American relief representative might go.

This is not saying that the Germans were stricter than necessary, if we excuse the exasperation of their militarism, in order to prevent information from passing out, when a multitude of Belgians would have risked their lives gladly to help the Allies.  One spy bringing accurate information might cost the German army thousands of casualties; perhaps decide the fate of a campaign.  They saw the Belgians as enemies.  They were fighting to take the lives of their enemies and save their own lives, which made it tough for them and the French and the British—­tough all round, but very particularly tough for the Belgians.

It was good for a vagrant American to dine at the American Legation, where Mr. and Mrs. Whitlock were far, very far, from the days in Toledo, Ohio, where he was mayor.  Some said that the place of the Minister to Belgium was at Havre, where the Belgian Government had its offices; but neither Whitlock nor the Belgian people thought so, nor the German Government, since they had realized his prestige with the Belgians and how they would listen to him in any crisis when their passions might break the bonds of wisdom.  Hugh Gibson, being the omnipresent Secretary of Legation in four languages, naturally was also present.  We recalled dining together in Honduras, when he was in the thick of vexations.

Trouble accommodatingly waits for him wherever he goes, because he has a gift for taking care of trouble, in the ascendancy of a cheerful spirit and much knowledge of international law.  His present for the Minister, who daily received stacks of letters from all sources asking the impossible, as well as from Americans who wanted to be sure that the food they gave was not being purloined by the Germans, was a rubber stamp, “Blame-it-all-there’s-a-state-of-war-in-Belgium!” which he suggested might save typewriting—­a recommendation which the Minister refused to accept, not to Gibson’s surprise.

On that Christmas afternoon and evening, the people promenaded the streets as usual.  You might have thought it a characteristic Christmas afternoon or evening except for the Landsturm patrols.  But there was an absence of the old gaiety, and they were moving as if from habit and moving was all there was to do.

They had heard the sound of the guns at Dixmude the night before.  Didn’t the sound seem a little nearer?  No.  The wind from that direction was stronger.  When?  When would the Allies come?