Nothing can depict the moral anguish of those days in Brussels, when the German _affiches_ were announcing victory after victory—when an increase of force, gathered from the Russian front, made their success appear inevitable. Trainloads of cannon, ammunition, and men rolled by during whole days and nights, troops reinforced by the desperate determination to win, by foul means or fair, which obsessed the Kaiser and his chiefs. It was a time of utter despair for the Belgians—for everyone, indeed, whose sympathies were with the Allies. And, to add to the pervading misery, every German victory was not only blazoned on the walls, but troops were marched through the city playing joyous and triumphant music from early morning until evening! When, at last, the news reached us that their onrush was stemmed for the second time, the occupying powers concealed it from us as far as possible. We had looked for great things from America, but were told that their men could not get over, while our souls were sickened by eulogistic accounts of all that the under-sea boats were doing. Each edition of our miserable papers presented a long list of ships sent to the bottom by treacherous Germany. But the Zeppelin was dead! That was some comfort; and, with a feeling that it was perhaps the sign of better times, we saw demolished the enormous iron-clad garage where one of these monsters used to be housed. But few gleams of real promise reached us, and it was dread of a fifth winter, then appearing inevitable, that broke the spirit of those who went (only then) to work in Germany as a desperate act of self-preservation. Even in days that were so much brighter for outsiders, in August and September, we were denied the satisfaction of knowing that our cause was progressing. The information allowed us did little to ease the pressure of mingled hope and anxiety. We longed to learn something definitely encouraging of what was going on where the cannon, ever louder, was continuously roaring. Day by day our papers were searched for some hopeful news, through long columns concocted only to destroy hope and breed despair. Every event suggesting menace to the Allied countries, culled from obscure journals in every part of the world (especially from the _National Zeitung_ of Bâle), was set forth and embroidered. Often they bore no more reliable heading than “_Le Bruit court_,” but their effect on a people now morbidly prone to look on the dark side of things was none the less depressing. Irish troubles; strikes and discontent in India; political confusion in France and Italy; friction between the United States and Japan or Mexico; disastrous failure of the Allied venture in Russia—such items contrasted with the triumphant German communiqués, which, even when acknowledging retreat, depicted it as a victory, or a mere tactical movement to attain a stronger position for a decisive counter offensive.