Many Belgians have left the country. That is easily understood. Those who were present at the massacres of Visé, Louvain, Dinant, Termonde ... hastened, in their terror, to abandon those haunts of horror. Those who lived in the towns left intact, such as Brussels and Gand, but who heard people talk of the massacres and the burnings, had also only one idea: to fly before the arrival of the Germans. Even those Belgians who did not leave at the outset eventually grew weary of the insupportable vexations inflicted on us by the authorities. Others took flight because they knew themselves to be threatened with imprisonment. Moreover, many of those who had means had prudently retired to foreign countries, to the great fury of the Germans; there was no way of getting at these "bad patriots," as it seems a German-Swiss journal called them (_K.Z._, 11th February, 1915); no way of forcing them to pay war-taxes. Moreover, it was these _émigrés_ who should have kept alive the industries _de luxe_; finally, they were conspiring together abroad, and rendering services to the Belgian Government at Havre. If only they could be forced to return! Our enemies accepted with enthusiasm an unlucky proposal--made by certain communal administrations and immediately withdrawn by them--that the absent persons should be subjected to a special tax, equal to ten times the personal tax. The communal councils which conceived the idea of this tax immediately realized its illegality, but Baron von Bissing seized the occasion which this afforded him of persecuting the _émigrés_. He published, on the 16th January, a special decree on the subject of the "additional extraordinary tax upon absentees" (_Belg. All._). It may be remarked that the tax touches only those who possess a certain competence. Here are two facts which show how far life was normal in Belgium in the spring of 1915, and how far the Belgian workers were delighted to place themselves at the service of Germany. _Railway Traffic in Belgium._ (_a_) An article in the _Düsseldorfer General-Anzeiger_ of the 19th April, 1915 (morning), asserts that the traffic on the Belgian railways is beginning to revive; indeed, says the writer, there are thirty-eight trains daily leaving the Gare du Nord in Brussels. He exaggerates slightly. Six weeks later, when traffic had become more active, a table, dated the 30th May, 1915, which appeared in the "Belgian" newspaper _L'Information_, gave the movements of trains in the Gare du Nord and Gare du Midi of Brussels for the month of June. We find that only thirty-four departures are given for the two stations. Thirty-four trains in June 1915--and in June 1914 there were 292. Compare the figures. _Trouble with the Artisans of Luttre._