And it was not only the poor who were driven to desperation by the enemy’s robbery. Everyone, save the very rich, or the _Barons Zeep_—the so-called soap-barons who made fortunes in secret relation with the Germans—was reduced to hard straits. Clothing became impossible to procure. Fashionable women were obliged to dye their linen sheets for summer wear, their blankets and curtains for winter; while club-men, in shiny trousers and frayed cuffs, were wont to exchange laughing comparisons as to the condition of their other wearing apparel, one likening his oft-patched pyjamas to Jacob’s coat of many colours! A pathetic instance of this dire need came to my notice one day as I was trying to coax a farmer in the open fields to sell me potatoes—for there was no other means of obtaining this article of food save by buying surreptitiously, smuggling it home under cover of night, and burying it underground. While I was talking to the farmer, an elderly man slowly passed us—a man evidently of good birth, whose clothes, though worn and shabby, showed the cut of a good tailor. Soon after he had passed, the farmer abruptly checked what he was saying to me and, with sullen eyes directed toward another part of his acres, muttered, “Look at that! They are all thieves, even the aristocrats!” I looked, and saw the man referred to tugging frantically to uproot a _carrot_! The farmer uttered a loud and angry cry, which interrupted his efforts. He rose without haste, and moved slowly away, his stick held dejectedly behind him. X As may be seen, existence did not improve with time. Each month the situation became darker and more alarming; and, after the United States declared war, the few Americans, we among them, obliged to remain in Brussels were hated by the occupying powers quite as cordially as the English. But we who represented a nation not only mighty in wealth and man-power, but of vast commercial importance to Germany, were treated with far greater consideration than the Belgians. Nevertheless, after the United States Minister, Consul, and entire diplomatic corps departed, we felt more or less at the mercy of that bullying tendency which power always brings out in the Prussian military character. The United States Consul, Mr. Ethelbert Watts—a man known for his tactful handling of difficult situations and trained in diplomacy by many years of service in the greater capitals—told me an instance of this characteristic.