In the smaller towns, where the Germans were billeted in Belgian houses, of course the hosts had to serve their unwelcome guests.

“Yet we managed to let them know what was in our hearts,” said one woman.  “Some tried to be friendly.  They said they had wives and children at home; and we said:  ’How glad your wives and children would be to see you!  Why don’t you go home?’”

When a report reached the commander in Ghent that an old man had concealed arms, a sergeant with a guard was sent to search the house.

“Yes, my son has a rifle.”

“Where is it?”

“In his hands on the Yser, if he is not dead, monsieur.  You are welcome to search, monsieur.”

Belgium was developing a new humour, a humour at the expense of the Germans.  In their homes they mimicked their rulers as freely as they pleased.  To carry mimickry into the streets meant arrest for the elders, but not always for the children.  You have heard the story, which is true, of how some gamins put carrots in old bowler hats to represent the spikes of German helmets, and at their leader’s command of “On to Paris!” did a goose-step backwards.  There is another which you may not have heard of a small boy who put on grandfather’s spectacles, a pillow under his coat, and a card on his cap, ‘Officer of the Landsturm.’  The conquerors had enough sense not to interfere with the battalion which was taking Paris; but the pseudo-Landsturm officer was chased into a doorway and got a cuff after his placard was taken away from him.

When a united public opinion faces bayonets it is not altogether helpless to reply.  By the atmospheric force of mass it enjoys a conquest of its own.  If a German officer or soldier entered a street car, women drew aside in a way to indicate that they did not want their garments contaminated.  People walked by the sentries in the streets giving them room as you would give a mangy dog room, yet as if they did not see the sentries; as if no sentries existed.

The Germans said that they wanted to be friendly.  They even expressed surprise that the Belgians would not return their advances.  They sent out invitations to social functions in Brussels, but no one came—­not even to a ball given by the soldiers to the daughters of the poor.  Belgium stared its inhospitality, its contempt, its cynical drolleries at the invader.

I kept thinking of a story I heard in Alaska of a man who had shown himself yellow by cheating his partner out of a mine.  He appeared one day hungry at a cabin occupied by half a dozen men who knew him.  They gave him food and a bunk that night; they gave him breakfast; they even carried his blanket-roll out to his sled and harnessed his dogs as a hint, and saw him go without one man having spoken to him.  No matter if that man believed he had done no wrong, he would have needed a rhinoceros hide not to have felt this silence.  Such treatment the Belgians have given to the Germans, except that they furnished the shelter and harnessed the team under duress, as they so specifically indicate by every act.  No wonder, then, that the old Landsturm guards, used at home to saying “Wie gehts?” and getting a cheery answer from the people they passed in the streets, were lonely.