is a favorite outing on a pleasant Sunday.  The Germans have succeeded in restoring the train service to the extent of two passenger trains daily between here and Brussels and one between here and Antwerp, and the military authorities pursue a surprisingly liberal policy in giving traveling passes to the Belgian population.  In addition to those who come by train, a steady procession of automobiles passes through all day; and next week, when a Berlin-Brussels express service is to be started, the local touring season will have a further boom.

About 5 per cent of the original population have come crawling back, and the three companies of Landsturm garrisoned here, together with the sightseers, form their source of revenue.  The more courageous shopkeepers who have come back and reopened their stores are coining money as never in peace times—­especially the little confectionery and pastry shops, where the soldiers off duty come for afternoon coffee, and the one tailor’s shop which is open.  Workmen are putting the finishing touches to the new pine-board roof on the cathedral and are making efforts to “restore” the stone exterior.  The famous Gothic Hotel de Ville is now protected by a high board fence, and two bearded Landsturm men mount guard there day and night.  A gang of laborers is making headway in cleaning up the interior of the hopelessly ruined University Library, and the streets are all cleared of debris.  The academic halls of the main university building, which suffered little damage, are not silent, for one of the Landsturm companies is quartered there.  I found half a hundred of them and two cows in the university quadrangle or campus.  The men were all unshaven, but of a good-natured sort, and many were the rough German jokes as they watched a comrade milking the cows preparatory to their slaughter on the spot by the company butcher, who stood in waiting, while at the same time the gray-haired university castellan was getting ready to take a time exposure of the cows.

“And yet they say we Germans are barbarians,” laughed an under officer.  “I bet you won’t find that the French soldiers, or the highly civilized English gentlemen, either, have a photographer come to take a picture of the cows they are about to eat.”

The venerable university guardian continued to do a brisk business making group pictures and solo portraits of Landsturm under officers and men at two francs per dozen postcards, till a Lieutenant appeared on the scene and the bugle sounded in the court for “boot inspection.”  All promptly lined up in double file against the brick university wall and presented feet for the critical eye of the inspector—­all except the company cooks, who were busy among their pots and pans and open-air cook stoves set up in the academic stone portico.

The last of the former students of the University of Louvain was probably the well-dressed, meek-looking young Chinese, eating luncheon at the near-by restaurant—­the only one open in town.  The German soldiers, fortunately, did not mistake him for a Japanese, and he has not been molested.