It is so gay, so naive, so insouciant, so truly and deliciously Belge, that I catch it ere it fades,--that mocking song addressed to the Kaiser, asking, in horror, who are these ragged beings: THE BELGIAN TO THE GERMAN. Ils n'ont pas votre bel tunique, Et ils n'ont pas votre bel air Mais leur courage est magnifique. Si ils n'ont pas votre bel tunique! A votre morgue ils donnent la nicque. Au milieu de leur plus gros revers, Si ils n'ont pas votre bel tunique, Et ils n'ont pas votre bel air! "What those poor fellows want most," says the journalist as we flash onwards, "is boots! They want one hundred thousand boots, the Belgian Army. You can give a friend all sorts of things. But he hardly likes it if you venture to give him boots. And yet they want them, these poor, splendid Belgians. They want them, and they must have them. We must give them to them somehow. Lots of them have no boots at all!" "I heard that the Belgians were getting boots from America," the author puts in suddenly. The journalist turns his head with a jerk. "What do you mean," he asks sharply. "Do you mean that they have _ordered_ them from America, or that America's _giving_ them." "I believe what my informant, a sick officer in the Belgian Army, whom I visited this morning, told me was that the Americans were _giving_ the boots." "Are you sure it's _giving_?" the journalist persists. "We English ought to see to that. Last night I had an interview with the Belgian Minister of War and I tried to get on this subject of boots. But somehow I felt it was intrusive of me. I don't know. It's a delicate thing. It wants handling. Yet _they must have the boots._" And I fancy they will get them, the heroes of Belgium. I think they will get their hundred thousand boots. Then a whiff of the sea reaches us and the grey waves of the North Sea stretch out before us over the edge of the endless yellow sands, where bronze-faced Turcos are galloping their beautiful horses up and down. We are in La Panne. The journalist sits still in his corner of the car, not fussing, not questioning, leaving it all to me. This is my show. It is I who have come here to see the gracious Queen on the sands. All the part he plays in it is to bring me. So the journalist, and the author and the others remain in the car. That is infinitely considerate, exquisitely so, indeed. For no writer on earth would care to go looking around with the Jupiter of Journalists at her elbow! * * * * * Rush, rush, we are on our way back now. The cold wind of wet, flat Flanders strikes at us as we fly along. It hits us in the face and on the back. It flicks us by the ear and by the throat. The window behind us is open. The window to right and the window to left are open too. All the windows are open because, as I said before, they are all broken! In fact, there are no windows! They've all been smashed out of existence. There are only holes.