their patience?—­the Governor General ordered that a few Belgian prisoners, some of them wounded, with their quickfiring gun drawn by a dog, should be marched through the crowded streets.  The men were covered with dust, their heads wrapped in blood-stained bandages, and they kept their eyes on the ground as if ashamed.  Some women sobbed on seeing them, others cursed their guards, others plundered a flower shop and showered flowers upon them.  At last two stalwart workmen shouldered away the escort, and, helped by the crowd, which paralysed the movements of the Germans, succeeded in kidnapping the prisoners, and getting them away to the neighbouring streets.  They could never be discovered, and it was the last display of the kind which the Governor gave to Brussels.

During the siege, people had learnt to recognize the voice of every fort of Antwerp.  They said to each other:  “That is Lizele, Wavre Ste. Catherine, Waelhem.”  One after the other the Belgian guns were silenced, first Wavre, then Waelhem ... and the vibrating boom of the German heavies was heard louder than ever.  The listening Bruxellois grew paler, straining every nerve to catch the voice of Antwerp.  It was as if their own life as a nation was slowly dying away, as if they were mourning their own agony.  But still the valiant spirit of the first days prevailed.  “They will be beaten for all that.  What was Antwerp compared with the Marne?  All forts must fall under ‘their’ artillery.  After all, the nest is empty; the King and the army are safe.”

Since those days a kind of reckless indifference has seized the Belgians.  If we must lose everything to gain everything, let us lose it.  The sooner the better.  It is the spirit of a poor man burning his furniture in order to shelter his children from cold, or of a Saint suffering every physical privation in order to gain the Kingdom of Heaven.  It is an uncanny spirit composed of wild energy and bitter-sweet irony.  “First Liege, then Brussels, then Namur, now Antwerp.  The King has gone, the Government has gone.  If all Belgium has to go, let it go.  It is the price we have to pay.  The victory of our soul shall be all the greater if our body is shattered and tortured.”

Henceforth, the voice of Belgium reaches us only from time to time.  Its sound is muffled by the enemy’s strangle-hold, which grows tighter and tighter.  Before the fall of Antwerp, the German administration of General von der Goltz had merely a temporary character.  We knew that most of the high officials were stopping in Brussels on their way to Paris.  On the other hand, any skilful move of the Allies, any successful sortie from Antwerp, might have jeopardized all the conqueror’s plans and necessitated an immediate retreat.  The Yser-Ypres struggle barred the way to Brussels as well as to Calais.  The Germans knew now that they were safe, at least for a good many months, and began systematically to “organize the country.”  All communications with the uninterrupted part of Belgium were interrupted.  It became more and more difficult and dangerous to cross the Dutch frontier without a special permit.  The economic and moral pressure increased steadily, and the conflict between conquerors and patriots began, a conflict unrelieved by dramatic interest or excitement from outside, which carried the country back to the worst days of Austrian and Spanish domination.