“We know how to suffer in Belgium,” said a Belgian jurist.  “Our ability to suffer and to hold fast to our hearths has kept us going through the centuries.  Flemish and French, we have stubbornness in common.  Now a ruffian has come into our house and taken us by the throat.  He can choke us to death, or he can slowly starve us to death, but he cannot make us yield.  No, we shall never forgive!”

“You too hate, then?” I asked.

“Of course I hate.  For the first time in my life I know what it is to hate; and so do my countrymen.  I begin to enjoy my hate.  It is one of the privileges of our present existence.  We cannot stand on chairs and tables as they do in Berlin cafes and sing our hate, but no one can stop our hating in secret.”

Beside the latest verboten and regulation of Belgian conduct on the city walls were posted German official news bulletins.  The Belgians stopped to read; they paused to re-read.  And these were the rare occasions when they smiled, and they liked to have a German sentry see that smile.

“Pour les enfants!” they whispered, as if talking to one another about a creche.  Little ones, be good!  Here is a new fairy tale!

When a German wanted to buy something he got frigid politeness and attention—­very frigid, telling politeness—­from the clerk, which said: 

“Beast!  Invader!  I do not ask you to buy, but as you ask, I sell; and as I sell I hate!  I hate! !  I hate! ! !”

An officer entering a shop and seeing a picture of King Albert on the wall, said: 

“The orders are to take that down!”

“But don’t you love your Kaiser?” asked the woman who kept the shop.

“Certainly!”

“And I love my King!” was the answer.  “I like to look at his picture just as much as you like to look at your Kaiser’s.”

“I had not thought of it in that way!” said the officer.

Indeed, it is very hard for any conqueror to think of it in that way.  So the picture remained on the wall.

How many soldiers would it take to enforce the regulation that no Belgian was to wear the Belgian colours?  Imagine thousands and thousands of Landsturm men moving about and plucking King Albert’s face or the black, yellow and red from Belgian buttonholes!  No sooner would a buttonhole be cleared in front than the emblem would appear in a buttonhole in the rear.  The Landsturm would face counter, flank, frontal, and rear attacks in a most amusing military manoeuvre, which would put those middle-aged conquerors fearfully out of breath and be rare sport for the Belgians.  You could not arrest the whole population and lead them off to jail; and if you bayoneted a few—­which really those phlegmatic, comfortable old Landsturms would not have the heart to do for such a little thing—­why, it would get into the American Press, and the Berlin Foreign Office would say: 

“There you are, you soldiers, breaking all the crockery again!”