There is one thing that can be said for the Roman emperors, they seldom starved their victims to death.  Popular imagination revels in their cruelty, and the Golden Legend displays to us all the grim splendours of a chamber of horrors.  But the worst of all tortures—­starvation—­is not often inflicted.  The idea is, I suppose, that the conversion must be sudden and striking.  But Belgium’s oppressors do not any longer want to convert her.  They have tried and they have failed.  They merely want to take all the food, all the raw materials, all the machines and—­last but not least—­all the labour they can out of her.  Their fight is not the fight of one religion against another.  It is the fight of material power against any philosophy, any religion which stands between it and the things which it covets.  The Germans do not sacrifice Belgium to their gods.  Such an ideal course is far from their thoughts.  They sacrifice Belgium to Germany—­that is, to themselves.  It matters very little whether a slave is able to speak or to think, as long as he is able to work.

Here again, in spite of the wholesale plundering of the first days of occupation, and of the enormous fines imposed on towns and provinces, I do not suppose that the German plan was deliberately to ruin the country.  It might even have been to develop its resources, as long as there was some hope of annexing it, though this benevolent spirit had scarcely any time to manifest itself.  After the Marne and the Yser, however, when it became evident that anyhow the whole of Belgium could never be retained, and when the attitude of the people showed clearly that they would always remain hostile to their new masters, the systematic sacking of the country began without any thought for the consequences.

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The best way of coming to some appreciation of the work accomplished during these two years is to remember that, before the war, Belgium was the richest country in Europe in proportion to her size.  Relatively she had the greatest commercial activity, the richest agricultural production, and she was more thickly populated than any other State, with the exception of Saxony.  Nowhere were the imports and exports so important, in proportion to the number of the population, nowhere did the average square mile yield such rich crops, nowhere was the railway system so developed.  Pauperism was practically unknown, and, even in the large towns, the number of people dependent on public charity was comparatively very small.  To this picture of unequalled prosperity oppose the present situation:  Part of the countryside left without culture for want of manure and horses; scarcely any cattle left in the fields; commerce paralysed by the stoppage of railway and other communications; industry at a complete standstill, with 500,000 men thrown out of work and nearly half of the population which remained in Belgium (3,500,000) on the verge of starvation and entirely dependent for their subsistance on the work of the Commission for Relief.