“It would have been a very grave mistake not to have invaded Belgium.  It would have been an unforgivable military blunder.  I justify the invading of Belgium on absolute military grounds.  What other grounds are there worth while talking about when a nation is in a war for its existence?”

It is the ruler of German Belgium speaking.  The stern, serious-faced Governor General von Bissing, whom they call “Iron Fist,” the man who crushes out sedition.  Returning, I had just come up from the front around Lille, and almost the only clothes I had were those on my back; and the mud of the trenches still clung to my boots and puttees in yellow cakes.  They were not the most proper clothes in which to meet King Albert’s successor, but in field gray I had to go.

The Governor General received me in a dainty Louis Quinze room done in rose and French gray, and filled incongruously with delicate chairs and heavy brocaded curtains, a background which instantly you felt precisely suited his Excellency.  In the English newspapers, which, by the way, are not barred from Berlin cafes, I had read of his Excellency as the “Iron Fist,” or the “Heavy Heel,” and I rather expected to see a heavy, domineering man.  Instead, a slender, stealthy man in the uniform of a General rose from behind a tapestry topped table, revealing, as he did, a slight stoop in his back, perhaps a trifle foppish.  He held out a long-fingered hand.

General von Bissing spoke no English.  Somehow I imagined him to be one of those old German patriots who did not learn the language simply because it was English.  Through Lieut.  Herrmann I asked the Governor General what Germany was doing toward the reconstruction of Belgium.  I told him America, when I had left, was under the impression that Belgium was a land utterly laid waste by the German armies.  I frankly told him that in America the common belief was that the German military Government meant tyranny; what was Germany doing for Belgium?

“I think,” replied Governor General von Bissing, “that we are doing everything that can be done under the circumstances.  Those farm lands which you saw, coming up from Lille to Brussels, were planted by German soldiers and in the Spring they will be harvested by our soldiers.  Belgium has not been devastated, and its condition has been grievously misstated, as you have seen.  You must remember that the armies have passed back and forth across it—­German, Belgian, English, and French—­but I think you have seen that only in the paths of these armies has the countryside suffered.  Where engagements were not fought or shots fired, Belgium is as it was.

“There has been no systematic devastation for the purpose of intimidating the people.  You will learn this if you go all over Belgium.  As for the cities, we are doing the best we can to encourage business.  Of course, with things the way they are now, it is difficult.  I can only ask you to go down one of the principal business streets here, the Rue de la Neuf, for instance, and price the articles that you find in the shops and compare them with the Berlin prices.  The merchants of Brussels are not having to sacrifice their stock by cutting prices, and, equally important, there are people buying.  I can unhesitatingly say that things are progressing favorably in Belgium.”