As soon as this illusion was dispelled the Germans hastened to attack the forts. They tried to take them by storm, and left 36,000 dead on the field. When Liège was at last captured, they lost ten days in getting into proper trim again, before they resumed their forward march, this time fully provided with artillery. This forced respite affected the first issue of the campaign. The Staff, without taking the Belgian army into account, had mapped out beforehand all the opening stages—Liège, Namur, Mons, Charleroi, and so on, down to the Kaiser’s entry into Paris. If our opponents went so far astray in their estimate of our fighting spirit, they must lay the blame on their diplomats and their military attachés, their journalists and their spies. The last German ministers at Brussels had certainly been of the same school as Herr von Jagow. They took no interest in the psychology of the Belgian people, and their contempt for the little country where they were received with open arms was only equalled, I should say, by their eagerness to leave its capital as soon as possible, since in their ambition they looked upon it as the mere stepping-stone to an Embassy. But what of their military attachés? Could they see in our soldiers nothing but marionettes of the parade-ground, and in our officers nothing but champion riders at army competitions? Stranger still was the lack of insight shown by the correspondents of German newspapers. They carefully noted the most trivial details of our public life, but their judgment of us was blinded by prejudice, and by the arrogance of a great nation which itself has only achieved unity at a recent date. They regarded Belgium as a mere geographical expression—the home of two hostile races, yoked together in spite of themselves, and determined never to fuse. The quarrels of Flemings and Walloons were depicted in their articles as the outcome of an implacable hatred, and the conflict of political parties as a war to the knife, for they only wished to see how far Germany could make capital out of this cleavage. But the love that all Belgians have for their freedom escaped the notice of these observers settled in our midst. They carefully dissected our national body, without discovering the national soul. Never had the Belgians seemed more divided than in the period preceding the war. Never were they in reality more united in a like devotion to their common country. What should we have gained by yielding to the German threats? What confidence could we have in the promises of a Government that shamelessly tore up a solemn treaty in order to gain easier access to the country of its foe?