In November 1917 news of the Italian disaster, grossly exaggerated, was published in three languages on all the city walls, with galling comments and childish boasts. Attention was called to the fact that the Central Powers had won from Italy, in three days, all that she had acquired in two years, and so forth. No chance was lost to dishearten the Belgian people, though, considering their absolutely helpless condition, the object of this is hard to imagine. It can only be understood as the same shortsighted and unnecessary bullying which a British soldier later told me he had endured for seven months when a prisoner in Germany. This poor fellow, a New Zealander, who had volunteered “for Belgium’s sake”—one of the many half-starved and filthy heroes who swarmed to Brussels when freed of their chains—recounted horrors of his prison existence almost beyond belief. Besides being obliged to work for the military advantage of their enemies, they were crowded together in such numbers that to sit down in their place of confinement was impossible; and when sleeping at night, they were obliged to lie one on top of the other. The heat and vermin were so intolerable, that a large percentage of them died, and all were forced to discard their clothing, in order to fight lice that swarmed over them “like a grey covering of dust”! But into those ghastly details I have no heart to go. I only refer to this one of innumerable stories, because of a feature that illustrates the ignoble and needless bullying practised by the Prussian officials. This man stated that their presiding officer not only obliged them to salute him with the utmost humility, but made them wait upon him as slaves. He would deliberately drop his pencil to the ground several times, and order a British soldier to return it each time with a subservient obeisance!