"The first months were the worst--and the best. The worst because we could not believe at first that war was there, the stupid, imbecile anachronism we had thought buried with astrology and feudalism. For me it was like an unimaginably huge roller advancing slowly, heavily, steadily, to crush out our lives. During the day, as I worked with the wounded, I threw all my will power into the effort to disbelieve in that inexorable advance. I said to myself: 'No, it's not possible! They _can't_ have invaded Belgium after their promises! Modern peoples don't do that sort of thing. No, it's not possible that Louvain is burned! Wild rumors are always afloat in such times. I must keep my head and not be credulous. The Germans are a highly civilized people who would not dream of such infamies as those they are being accused of.' All that I said to myself, naïvely, by day. At night, every hour, every half-hour, I started up from sleep, drenched in cold sweat, dreaming that the crushing roller was about to pass over us. Then it came, it passed, it crushed. "But there were other, better things about those first months. For one thing, we had hope still. We hoped constantly for deliverance. Every morning I said to the girl who brought the milk, 'Are they here yet?' 'They' meant the French troops coming to deliver us. Yes, at first we expected them from one day to the next. Then from one week to the next, then from one month to the next. Finally, now, we have no strength left for anything but silent endurance. Besides that hope, which kept us alive those first months, we were not yet in that windowless prison which 'they' have succeeded in making our own country to us. We had news of France and of the outside world through the French and English prisoners. They were brought into our improvised hospital to have their wounds dressed before they were put on the train to be sent forward to their German prisons. As we cared for them we could get news of the battles; sometimes we heard through them of the men of our families; always they were a link with the world outside. We did not know what a priceless boon that was. "But even this slight contact was soon forbidden us. We showed too openly the comfort it brought us. Free people, as we had always been, we were not then trained, as tyranny since has trained us, to the wretched arts of secrecy. We did too much for those prisoners. The people in the streets crowded about them too eagerly, showed them too many kindnesses. 'They' decided that our one link with the outside world must be broken. Fewer and fewer prisoners were sent; finally we saw none--for weeks and weeks none at all. We knew nothing but what 'they' told us, saw no other world, were hypnotized almost into believing that no other world existed.