In the face of such testimony all the German argument crumbles to pieces.  As Monseigneur Mercier puts it decisively:  “It is not true that our workmen have caused any disturbance or even threatened anywhere to do so.  Five million Belgians, hundreds of Americans, never cease to admire the perfect dignity and patience of our working classes.  It is not true that the workmen, deprived of their work, become a charge on the occupying power or on public charity under its control.  The ’Comite National,’ in whose activity the Germans take no part, is the only organisation concerned in the matter.”  But even supposing, for the sake of argument, that the 43rd article of the Hague Convention should justify some form of coercion in the matter, the new measures should only be applied to some works of public utility in Belgium.  Far from encouraging such works, the Germans have stopped them, seized employed and unemployed, and sent them either to Germany or to some war-work on the Western front.  To put it simply, they wish to avoid public disturbance where there is no disturbance, to save money which is not their money, to deport unemployed who are not unemployed, to oblige them to work against their country instead of for their country, and in Germany instead of in Belgium.  They are doing everything but what they want to do, they go anywhere but where they are going, and they say anything but what they are thinking.

[Footnote 6:  Letter of Cardinal Mercier to Governor von Bissing, Nov. 29th, 1916.]

[Footnote 7:  Reply of the Deputies of Mons to Governor von Bissing, Nov. 27th, 1916.]

* * * * *

The other day I heard two people—­two wizened city clerks—­discussing the war in the train.  “When and how will the Germans be beaten?” asked the first.  The other shrugged his shoulders and declared solemnly, while pulling at his pipe:  “The Germans?  They have been beaten a long time ago!  They were beaten when they set foot for the first time in Belgium.”

The remark is not new, and I daresay it was a reminiscence of some sentence picked up in a newspaper or at a popular meeting.  But whoever uttered it for the first time was right.  The case of Belgium has uplifted the whole moral atmosphere of the struggle.  Since the first guns boomed around Liege and the first civilians were shot at Vise, a war which might have been represented, to a certain extent, as a conflict of interests, has become a conflict of principles.  In a way, the Germans were beaten because, from that moment, they had to struggle against unseen and inflexible forces.  Whatever you choose to call them—­democratic instinct, Christian aspiration, or the conscience of the civilised world—­they will do their work relentlessly, every day of the year, every hour of the day.  It is their doing that, in spite of the immense financial influence and the most active propaganda, Germany has become unpopular all over the world.  Other facts, like the Lusitania, the trial of Miss Cavell, the work accomplished by Zeppelins, have contributed to provoke this feeling.  But whether we consider the origin or the last exploits of German policy, whether we think of two years ago or of to-day, the image of Belgium, of her invasion, of her martyrdom, of her oppression, of her deportations, dominates the spiritual aspect of the whole war.