The realities of the military occupation are brought home to the people perhaps most at the Gare du Nord and the Place de la Gare, where the Civic Guards, in their curious comic opera caps, are reinforced by German gendarmes with rifles slung over their shoulders.  Civilians are not allowed to cross this square in front of the railway station.  “Keep to the sidewalk” is the brusque order to those who stray.  Also the park in front of the Royal Palace is closed to the public.  Three bright red gasoline tank wagons among the trees give it an incongruous touch, while the walks and drives are used as an exercising ground for officers’ mounts.  All the windows of the Royal Palace are decorated with the sign of the Red Cross.

Brussels just now is humorously a victim of the double standard—­not moral, but financial.  All kinds of money go here on the basis of 1 mark equaling 1 franc 25 centimes, but shopkeepers still fix prices and waiters bring bills in francs, and when payment is tendered in marks you generally get change in both—­a proceeding that involves elaborate mathematical computations.  At the next table to you in the restaurant of the Palace Hotel, once a favorite stopping place for Anglo-American travelers, but now virtually an exclusive German officers’ club, with the distinction of a double guard posted at the front door, sits a short, fiercely mustached General of some sort—­evidently a person of great importance from the commotion his entry caused among all the other officers in the room.  In his buttonhole he wears the Iron Cross of the second class, the Iron Cross of the first class pinned to his breast, and underneath the rare “Pour le Merite Order, with Swords.”  His bill amounts to about 7 francs, for he consumed the regular 4-franc table d’hote, plus a full bottle of red Burgundy.  He tenders a blue 100-mark bill in payment and gets in return a baffling heap of change, including 1 and 2 franc Belgium paper notes, 5 and 10 mark German bills, Belgian and German silver, and Belgian nickel coins with holes punched in the centres.  The General takes out his pencil and begins elaborate calculations on the menu—­then sends for the head waiter.  It takes some time and much talk to convince him that he is not being “short changed.”  The double standard furnishes many of these humorous interludes.

Equally exasperating is the double time standard.  The Germans set their official clocks and watches by Berlin time, but have made no attempt to force it on the natives, who continue loyal to Belgian time, which is one hour behind Berlin.

Brand Whitlock, the American Minister to Belgium, who runs a strong risk of having a statue erected to him some day by the grateful Belgian people, is quite the happiest, most relieved-looking person in Brussels since he heard the good news that all America was hard at work collecting food for the Belgians and that England would not prevent its delivery.  Soon after the German occupation of Brussels a committee