I went out next morning and saw the ashes and ruins into which the Germans had plunged the city and I had a talk with one Belgian man who had been made an atheist by the crushing experience. As I spoke with him, hearing his terrible tale, and seeing from his shop window dozens of homes which were burned down, and beautiful buildings deliberately desecrated, my faith in God did not diminish, but my confidence in my own former pacifism did, and I felt a growing faith in militancy when dealing with the German who respects nothing on earth but force. I was day by day realizing that he must be dealt with on his own grounds and with his own weapons. It was hard for me to come to this position but the cold and cruel facts were forcing it upon me. CHAPTER XXIX RESULTS OF "FRIGHTFULNESS" When Viellaur had given me my passport to Liége he had told me orally to come back by the same route I went. But it did not say so in the paper itself, and I ignored his instructions. I took an extended trip south in Belgium and I learned on this instructive but sad journey, just how the Germans hound the Belgian people and make life miserable for them. If the Belgians show any resentment whatever, they are arrested as seditious persons and usually deported to Germany to work in the fields or ammunition factories. I saw many instances where German officers or soldiers entered the homes of people and commanded the owners to stand back while they searched the place, and if mayhap, they found a letter from some friend in the house which had any complaints or any sentiment against the German invasion, the people were arrested and their existence made even more unhappy. On this tour I also experienced something of the hard conditions from scarcity of food, and in the home of Madame Beauvoit, in southern Belgium, the mother of one of my parishioners in the States, I ate black bread the like of which I have never eaten before. I delivered a note to her from her daughter and stayed at her house overnight, but I could stay no longer as I was conscious that I was eating up her living. She told me at supper that they were only allowed ten ounces per day of that bread, bad as it was. I could hardly push the next swallow down my throat, for I was eating the life of that woman. I also observed the marvelous working of Mr. Hoover's food commission under the management of Mr. Whitlock and Hugh Gibson, and it was a wonderful organization and certainly an inspiring sight. But during those days I looked upon scenes and witnessed spectacles which break the heart, and I had opportunities of talking with Belgian people in their homes, where I stayed for meals, or in which I slept, and they told me heart-rending tales of the experiences they had gone through.