Incidentally that summary action, followed by a quick visit to the German general in his camp on the outskirts, saved the city. That is a long story. It is told in Alexander Powell's "Fighting in Flanders," but it suffices here to state that by a pact between the Belgian burgomaster of Ghent and the German commandant it was understood that the wounded man was not to be considered a prisoner, but under the jurisdiction of the American Consulate. A week after this incident Van Hee paid his first visit to this wounded man in the Belgian hospital. He was an honest fellow of about forty--the type of working-man who had aspired to nothing beyond a chance to toil and raise a family for the Fatherland. Weltpolitik, with its vaunting boast of "World-power or Downfall," was meaningless to him and his comrades gathered in the beer- gardens on a Sunday. Suddenly out of this quiet, uneventful life he was called to the colors and sent killing and burning through the Belgian villages. His officers had told him that it would be a sorry thing for any German soldier to be captured, for these Belgians, maddened by the pillage of their country, would take a terrible revenge upon any luckless wretches that fell into their hands. Now, more suddenly than anything else had ever happened in his life, a bullet had stabbed him in the throat and he found himself a prisoner at the mercy of these dreaded Belgians. "Why are they tending me so carefully during these last seven days?" "Are they getting me ready for the torturing?" "Are they making me well in order that I may suffer all the more?" Grim speculation of that kind must have been running through his simple mind. For when we opened the door of his room, he slunk cowering over to his bed, staring at us as if we were inquisitors about to lead him away to the torture chamber, there to suffer vicariously for all the crimes of the German army. His body, already shrunken by overwork, visibly quivered before us, the perspiration beading on his ashen face. We had come to apprise him of his present status as a citizen under the protectorate of America. Van Hee approached the subject casually with the remark: "You see, you are not a Frenchman!" "No, I am not a Frenchman," the quailing fellow mechanically repeated. "And you are not a Belgian," resumed Van Hee. He was not quite sure about disclaiming that, but he saw what was expected of him. So he faltered: "No, I am not a Belgian." "And you are not an Englishman, eh?" According to formula he answered: "No, I am not an Englishman!" but I sensed a bit more of emphasis in the disavowal of any English taint to his blood. Van Hee was taking this process of elimination in order to clear the field so that his man could grasp the fact that he was to all intents an American, and at last he said: "No longer are you a German either."