truction. And the assumption must be
that the map was obtained from the local authorities by some agent
masquerading as a citizen. I heard, indeed, that known citizens of all
the chief towns returned to their towns or to the vicinity thereof in the
uniform and with the pleasing manners of German warriors. The
organisation for doing good to Belgium against Belgium's will was an
incomparable piece of chicane and pure rascality. Strange--Belgians
were long ago convinced that the visitation was inevitably coming,
and had fallen into the habit of discussing it placidly over their beer
at nights.

To return to the side-street. So far as one could see, it had not
received a dent, not a scratch. Even the little windows of the little
red houses were by no means all broken. All the front doors stood
ajar. I hesitated to walk in, for these houses seemed to be
mysteriously protected by influences invisible. But in the end the
vulgar, yet perhaps legitimate, curiosity of the sightseer, of the
professional reporter, drove me within the doors. The houses were
so modest that they had no entrance-halls or lobbies. One passed
directly from the street into the parlour. Apparently the parlours were
completely furnished. They were in an amazing disorder, but the
furniture was there. And the furnishings of all of them were alike, as
the furnishings of all the small houses of a street in the Five Towns
or in a cheap London suburb. The ambition of these homes had
been to resemble one another. What one had all must have. Under
ordinary circumstances the powerful common instinct to resemble is
pitiable. But here it was absolutely touching.

Everything was in these parlours. The miserable, ugly ornaments,
bought and cherished and admired by the simple, were on the
mantelpieces. The drawers of the mahogany and oak furniture had
been dragged open, but not emptied. The tiled floors were littered
with clothes, with a miscellany of odd possessions, with pots and
pans out of the kitchen and the scullery, with bags and boxes. The
accumulations of lifetimes were displayed before me, and it was
almost possible to trace the slow transforming of young girls into
brides, and brides into mothers of broods.

Within the darkness of the interiors I could discern the stairs. But I
was held back from the stairs. I could get no further than the
parlours, though the interest of the upper floors must have been
surpassing.

So from house to house. I handled noth