or' bless you, _I_ don't want to take _any one's_ life. I 'ate war,
more than ever after all I've seen of it. Upon my honour, gentlemen,
all I want is Miss Warren." Here one member of the court made a
facetious remark in German to a colleague who sniggered, while, with
his insolent light blue eyes, he surveyed Bertie's honest, earnest
face, thin and hollowed with privations and fatigue....

He was perfunctorily defended by a languid Belgian barrister, tired
of the invidious role of mechanical pleading for the lives of
prisoners, especially where, as in this case, they were foredoomed,
and eloquence was waste of breath, and even got you disliked by the
impatient ogres, thirsty for the blood of an English man or
woman.... "Du reste," he said to a colleague, "agissait-il d'un
Belge, mon cher, tu sais que l'on se sentirait force a risquer le
deplaisir de ces ogres: tandis que, pour un pauvre bougre
d'Anglais...? Et qu'ont-ils fait pour nous, les Anglais? Nous avons
tache de leur boucher le trou a Liege--et--il--nous--ont--abandonne.
Enfin--allons boire un coup--"

Verdict: as translated by the ferocious interpreter:--

"Ze Court faind you Geeltee. You are condemned to Dess, and you will
be shot on Monday."

In the prison of Saint-Gilles--as I believe elsewhere in
Belgium--though there might be a military governor in control who
was a German, the general direction remained in the hands of the
Belgian staff which was there when the German occupation began.
These Belgian directors and their subordinates were as kind and
humane to the prisoners under their charge as the Germans were the
reverse. Everything was done at Saint-Gilles to alleviate the mental
agony of the condemned-to-death. The German courts tried to prolong
and enhance the agony as much as possible, by sentencing the
prisoners three days, six days, a week before the time of execution
(though for fear of a reprieve this sentence was not immediately
published) and letting them know that they had just so many days or
hours to live: consequently most of them wasted away in prison with
mind-agony, inability to sleep or eat; and even opiates or
soporifics administered surreptitiously by the Belgian prison
doctors were but slight alleviations.

Bertie when first placed in his cell at Saint-Gilles asked for pen,
ink, and paper. They were supplied to him. He was allowed to keep on
the electric light all night, and he distracted his mind--with some
dreadful interva