Curiously enough, in this retreat, pervaded by the sadness that inevitably reigns where the old order changes, I found the young and enthusiastic Vicaire, Professor Maertens, assistant director of the new Lace Normal School of Bruges. He lives with his aunt, who is the mother director of the Béguinage and called “Madame, la Grande Dame,” tho she is still Mademoiselle. The Béguinage may in one sense represent the despair of the lace, since what is happening there is happening throughout Belgium. But in the person of Professor Maertens of the Normal School, the Béguinage represents, too, the hope of the lace. In the plain little room of his charming Gothic house, he explained with admirable clarity the necessity which led to the founding of this Normal School by the State in 1911, and the system which it has developed. He then arranged that I should “assist” at the _réouverture_ of the school the following morning. There was to be a reopening because, in common with so many schools of Belgium, the Lace Normal had been driven from its quarters by the Germans, and tho after their eviction the teachers had persisted in continuing their classes in a convent, where their persecutors forced them to receive two Austrian pupils (from whom, however, they concealed much), they were in the true sense to begin again on January 7, 1919. That was fully four weeks after the invader had had to evacuate, for eager as they were to commence, with their best effort, they had not been able before this to prepare three school-rooms and a few smaller ones on the ground floor for use. We are accustomed to the pictures of the territories desolated by the Germans, but unless one goes from house to house in the districts supposed to be left unharmed, he can have no conception of the state in which they were left. However, by Thursday morning the few rooms on the ground floor had been disinfected and whitewashed, and the Lace Normal School of Belgium re-opened its doors at 8:30 o’clock. Poets have described the shining faces of children on their way to school—but after pupils and teachers have been ground under the heel of an implacable oppressor for four years there is still another light in their faces as they reassemble in a free school-room. It was generous of them to allow me to share their first morning.