, industriously, they said
to him that the English had been poor friends of his country, that they
had been late in coming to the rescue. Germany was the friend, not
England. In the homes throughout Belgium, these unbidden guests are
claiming slavery is a beneficent institution, that it is better to be
ruled by the German military, and made efficient for German ends, than
to continue a free people.

For a year, our Red Cross Corps worked under the direction and authority
of the Belgian prime minister, Baron de Broqueville. The prime minister
in the name of his government has sent to this country an official
protest against the new tax levied by the Germans on his people. The
total tax for the German occupation amounts to $192,000,000. He writes:

"The German military occupation during the last fifteen months has
entirely prevented all foreign trade, has paralyzed industrial activity,
and has reduced the majority of the laboring classes to enforced
idleness. Upon the impoverished Belgian population whom Germany has
unjustly attacked, upon whom she has brought want and distress, who have
been barely saved from starvation by the importation of food which
Germany should have provided--upon this population, Germany now imposes
a new tax, equal in amount to the enormous tax she has already imposed
and is regularly collecting."

[Illustration: One of the dangerous Belgian franc-tireurs, who made it
necessary for the German Army to burn and bayonet babies and old women.
His name is Gaspar. He is three years old.]

The Belgian Legation has protested unavailingly to our Government that
Germany, in violation of The Hague Conventions, has forced Belgian
workmen to perform labor for the German army. Belgian Railway employees
at Malines, Luttre and elsewhere refused to perform work which would
have released from the transportation service and made available for the
trenches an entire German Army Corps. These Belgian workmen were
subjected to coersive measures, which included starvation and cruel
punishments. Because of these penalties on Belgians refusing to be
traitors, many went to hospitals in Germany, and others returned broken
in health to Belgium.

After reading the chapter on the German spy system, a Belgian wrote me:

"That spying business is not yet the worst. Since then, the Germans have
succeeded in outdoing all that. The basest and the worst that one can
dream of is it not that campaign of slander and blackmail whic