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broken furniture as they are; let the bullet marks and the bloodstains remain, and it will do more than all the sermons that can be preached, than all the pictures that can be painted, than all the books that can be written, to drive home a realization of what is meant by that dreadful thing called War. The distance from Louvain to Brussels is in the neighbourhood of twenty miles, and our car with its fluttering flags sped between lines of cheering people all the way. Men stood by the roadside with uncovered heads as they saw the Stars and Stripes whirl by; women waved their handkerchiefs while tears coursed down their cheeks. As we neared Brussels news of our coming spread, and soon we were passing between solid walls of Belgians who waved hats and canes and handkerchiefs and screamed, "Vive l'Amerique! Vive l'Amerique!" I am not ashamed to say that a lump came in my throat and tears dimmed my eyes. To these helpless, homeless, hopeless people, the red-white-and-blue banner that streamed from our windshield really was a flag of the free. Brussels we found as quiet and orderly as London on a Sunday morning. So far as streets scenes went we might have been in Berlin. German officers and soldiers were scattered everywhere, lounging at the little iron tables in front of the cafes, or dining in the restaurants or strolling along the tree-shaded boulevards as unconcernedly as though they were in the Fatherland. Many of the officers had brought high, red-wheeled dogcarts with them, and were pleasure-driving in the outskirts of the city; others, accompanied by women who may or may not have been their wives, were picnicking in the Bois. Brussels had become, to all outward appearances at least, a German city. German flags flaunted defiantly from the roofs of the public buildings, several of which, including the Hotel de Ville, the Palais de Justice and the Cathedral, were reported to have been mined. In the whole of the great city not a single Belgian flag was to be seen. The Belgian police were still performing their routine duties under German direction. The royal palace had been converted into a hospital for German wounded. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was occupied by the German General Staff. The walls and hoardings were plastered with proclamations signed by the military governor warning the inhabitants of the penalties which they would incur should they molest the German troops. The great square in front of the G
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