German officers still said "Barton, die fous brie,"
instead of "Pardon, je vous prie" (if they were polite), but they
were quite able to contribute _articles de fond_ to a pretended
national Belgian press. Besides there was a sufficiency of Belgian
"Sans-Patries" ready to come to their assistance: Belgian nationals
of German-Jewish or Dutch-Jewish descent, who in the present
generation had become Catholic Christians as it ranged them with the
best people. They were worthy and wealthy Belgian citizens, but
presumably would not have deeply regretted a change in the political
destinies of Belgium, provided international finance was not
adversely affected. There were also a few Belgian Socialists--a few,
but enough--who took posts under the German provisional government,
on the plea that until you could be purely socialistic it did not
matter under what flag you drew your salary.

Von Giesselin was most benevolently intentioned, in reality a
kind-hearted man, a sentimentalist. Not quite prepared to go to the
stake himself in place of any other victim of Prussian cruelty, but
ready to make some effort to soften hardships and reduce sentences.
(There were others like him--Saxon, Thuringian, Hanoverian,
Wuerttembergisch--or the German occupation of Belgium might have
ended in a vast Sicilian Vespers, a boiling-over of a maddened
people reckless at last of whether they died or not, so long as they
slew their oppressors.) He hoped through the pieces played at the
theatres and through his censored, subsidized press to bring the
Belgians round to a reasonable frame of mind, to a toleration of
existence under the German Empire. But his efforts brought down on
him the unsparing ridicule of the Parisian-minded Bruxellois. They
were prompt to detect his attempts to modify the text of French
operettas so that these, while delighting the lovers of light music,
need not at the same time excite a military spirit or convey the
least allusion of an impertinent or contemptuous kind towards the
Central Powers. Thus the couplets

"Dans le service de l'Autriche
Le militaire n'est pas riche"

were changed to

"Dans le service de la Suisse
Le militaire n'est pas riche."

These passionate lines of a political exile:

"A l'etranger un pacte impie
Vendait mon sang, liait ma foi,
Mais a present, o ma patrie
Je pourrai done mourir pour toi!"

were rendered