Secret organizations in Belgium occasionally brought us a ray of encouragement, despite the twenty thousand German civilians endeavouring to discover and destroy these sources of information opposed to what was allowed to appear in our papers. But, by dint of passing from mouth to mouth, the news became so distorted or exaggerated that one scarcely knew what to believe. We all had maps spread over our walls, on which every mile that the British and French advanced was marked with pins bearing little flags of the nations. For how many months—_years_, indeed—we pored over that line as it crept closer and closer to St. Quentin, Cambrai, and other points considered the keys to a rapid and overwhelming victory! I cannot recall them without painful recollection of our many disappointments. In the spring of 1918 we put those maps out of sight, and ceased reading the communiqués vouchsafed us by a German press. The most trying element of all, in regard to the front, was the _authentic_ information we received by word of mouth, as early as December 1916, of the taking of Courtrai, St. Quentin, etc., by the Allied armies. The stirring account grew as it passed from one excited recounter to another. It was originally obtained, as stated above, from some unknown but trustworthy source. But later on we came to believe that these stories were, in great part, spread by the Germans in order to weaken and destroy what faith and hope still survived in the country. I heard soldiers, even at this time, express very gloomy views as to their nation’s prospects in the war. Once in a tram, just before the last temporarily successful onslaught of the Germans at Verdun, I heard one, who pretended he was drunk and had possibly been taught the words in French, cry out hysterically: “Our cause is lost! _Nous sommes fichus! Nous sommes fichus!_” For some reason beyond the comprehension of civil minds the occupying Government appeared bent upon destroying every vestige of hope in Belgian hearts. Invariably on the eve of a German victory, exhilarating rumours of great Allied successes were set forth from unknown sources awakening joy in the prison city which often verged on an outburst of dangerous enthusiasm. Then, as invariably, the blazing blue _affiche_ appeared, announcing an overwhelming defeat of the Allies in the very section where they were understood to have been successful. The subtle trickery of such tactics might in time have attained its object; certainly there could be no better method of wearying and torturing a people into losing faith. And while it did not succeed with the better classes, it tired and broke the spirit of the suffering poor to such an extent that, even when positive proof of successes reached us, they would not believe; for they had come to the conviction that the Germans were invincible and would never give up an inch of Belgium.