s out. The fathers
and the mothers are together, they lead their little children by the
hand or push them gently before them. There is no anticipation in their
eyes; no eagerness and no impatience in their bearing. They do not
hustle each other or scramble for their places. It is their silence and
submission that you cannot stand.

For you have a moment of dreadful inactivity after the setting of the
tables for the _premier service_. You have filled your bowls with black
coffee; somebody else has laid the slices of white bread on the bare
tables. You have nothing to do but stand still and see them file in to
the banquet. On the banners and standards from the roof and balustrades
the Lion of Flanders ramps over their heads. And somewhere in the back
of your brain a song sings itself to a tune that something in your brain
wakes up:

_Ils ne vont pas dompter
Le vieux lion de Flandres,
Tant que le lion a des dents,
Tant que le lion peut griffer._

It is the song the Belgian soldiers sang as they marched to battle in
the first week of August. It is only the end of September now.

And somebody standing beside you says: "_C'est triste, n'est-ce pas?_"

You cannot look any more.

At the canteen the men are pouring out coffee from enormous enamelled
jugs into the small jugs that the waitresses bring. This wastes your
time and cools the coffee. So you take a big jug from the men. It seems
to you no heavier than an ordinary teapot. And you run with it. To carry
the largest possible jug at the swiftest possible pace is your only
chance of keeping sane. (It isn't till it is all over that you hear the
whisper of "_Anglaise!_" and realize how very far from sane you must
have looked running round with your enormous jug.) You can fill up the
coffee bowls again--the little bowls full, the big bowls only half full;
there is more than enough coffee to go round. But there is no milk
except for the babies. And when they ask you for more bread there is not
enough to go twice round. The ration is now two slices of dry bread and
a bowl of black coffee three times a day. Till yesterday there was an
allowance of meat for soup at the mid-day meal; to-day the army has
commandeered all the meat.

But you needn't stand still any more. After the first service the bowls
have to be cleared from the tables and washed and laid ready for the
next. Round the great wooden tubs there is a frightful competition. It
is who can wash and