These are the people whom America, England, Spain, and many generous people in other allied and neutral countries have tried to save from material starvation.  If I could only show to my readers how they are saving themselves from despair, from spiritual starvation, I should be well repaid for my trouble, for, among all the wonders of this war, which has displayed mankind as at once so much worse and so much better than we thought, there is perhaps nothing more surprising than the way in which the Belgian people have kept their spirits up.

One can, to a certain extent, understand the bright courage and the grim humour of the fighting soldier; he has the excitement of battle to sustain him through danger and suffering.  But that an unarmed population, which, having witnessed the martyrdom of many peaceful towns, is threatened with utter destruction, which, ruined by war contributions and requisitions, is on the brink of starvation, which, persecuted by spies and subjected constantly to the most severe individual and collective punishments on the slightest pretext, is obliged to refrain from any manifestation of patriotic sentiments—­that such a population, completely cut off from its Government and from most of its political leaders, and, moreover, poisoned every day by news concocted by the enemy, should remain unshakable in its courage and loyalty and should still be able to laugh at the efforts made by its masters to bring it into submission, is truly one of the most amazing spectacles which we have witnessed since the war broke out.  General von Bissing has declared that the Belgians are an enigma to him.  No wonder.  They are an enigma to themselves.  I am not going to explain the miracle.  I will only attempt to show how inexplicable, how miraculous, it is.

* * * * *

The German occupation of Belgium may be roughly divided into two periods:  Before the fall of Antwerp, when the hope of prompt deliverance was still vivid in every heart, and when the German policy, in spite of its frightfulness, had not yet assumed its most ruthless and systematic character; and, after the fall of the great fortress, when the yoke of the conqueror weighed more heavily on the vanquished shoulders, and when the Belgian population, grim and resolute, began to struggle to preserve its honour and loyalty and to resist the ever increasing pressure of the enemy to bring it into complete submission and to use it as a tool against its own army and its own King.

I am only concerned here with the second period.  The story of the German atrocities committed in some parts of the country at the beginning of the occupation is too well known to require any further comment.  Every honest man, in Allied and neutral countries, has made up his mind on the subject.  No unprejudiced person can hesitate between the evidence brought forward by the Belgian Commission of Enquiry and the vague denials, paltry excuses and insolent calumnies opposed