“Your men are about to kill that chap out there,” said my friend, who, with his companion, galled as they were by the unfairness of the attack, had refrained from interfering. To have done so would have expressed contempt of military discipline; moreover, they were secretly pleased that the officer should have his eyes morally opened, if physically closed, by blows intended for a civilian guilty only of an impatient exclamation! “_Ach!_” returned the official, shrugging his shoulders; “if they are beating him he deserves it!—that’s our orders. We submit to no resistance here!” “Very good,” returned my friend; “but have you looked at that man’s papers? Do you know who he is?” “Bah! What’s that to me?” returned the surly brute, who held the still unexamined passes in his hand. “Our discipline is indifferent to rank; he may be who he may!” “If you glance at his papers you may think differently;—he is Lieutenant von ——, aide-de-camp to General von ——.” The official stared; his mouth fell open. “Eh?” he articulated in his throat, too astounded to utter a word; then, nervously dropping other papers to the floor, he sought the officer’s pass, read the signature, and, followed by his colleague and the others, rushed for the lock-up house. It was then that my friend saw the helpless lieutenant, pressed into a corner, being brutally pommelled by the two soldiers. Poor man! he was a sight to behold when he joined them later—nose distorted, one eye swollen and blackening, and several ugly cuts on his face. He said very little when rejoining his companions; but, judging by the meek demeanour of the bully officials, some truths had been told them they were not likely to forget, which made it clear they would pay dearly for carrying their habitual abuse of authority into the wrong camp! The lieutenant, as they pursued their journey, could not refrain from smiling at the comic side of the affair. He appeared, however, morally shocked, and the few remarks he made suggested this significance: “The German man is a brute at heart!” When in authority, he certainly appears so, especially when endowed with military power—the sacred fetish of his race! It was under the constant menace of similar treatment that the inhabitants of occupied Belgium existed. Galled by pitiless impositions; denied all freedom of action or word; robbed and deprived even of home privacy; spied upon and never knowing on what false charge one might be arrested, one could do nothing but endure. Rebellion would have been unavailing against armed forces, and only cause additional misery to others.