If that haughty and arrogant horde had dropped into our midst from a cloudless sky, I hardly think it could have caused more awed astonishment to the general public. So fantastically harrowing had been the tales of their uncivilized deeds in other quarters of Belgium, that the half-stunned people had come to think of the German army as something fabulous, something they were not likely ever to behold as a material reality. Stories of outrages, inconceivable in the present age, had been so mingled with encouraging reports of the monster’s repulse, that popular opinion was unable to decide what was true and what was not—was unable to picture the awful menace rushing upon them as other than a moral nightmare, which, they imagined, would disappear as abruptly and abnormally as it had come. The dazed amazement in the faces of that watching throng might have moved a devil to tears, or awakened rage in the heart of an angel—so silent and helpless they appeared before the mighty and pitiless force advancing through the stunned city—so callously indifferent was that force to the shame of their deed! It was like seeing a child confounded by the blow of a strong man who strode by, smiling with triumph at sight of its helpless pain. It made one ashamed to be akin in species to a race capable of committing, and so arrogantly, a wrong never to be effaced from their history. Unknown to us at the time, Monsieur Adolphe Max, the ever-to-be-honoured Bourgmestre of Brussels, had gone early that morning under a white flag to implore the officer in command for permission to telegraph a plea to the German Emperor that his army be forbidden to enter Brussels—the city where he, the Kaiser, had been welcomed and entertained, only a week or so earlier, by the Belgian King and people. The officer promised to communicate his request to the general-in-chief. But the only reply Monsieur Max received was, not only the entrance of the troops, but a demand for enormous quantities of food and a _contribution de guerre_ from the city of Brussels of fifty million francs, to be paid in three days; and from the province of Brabant four hundred and fifty millions, to be paid before the 1st of September! This was William the Second’s response to a people whose faith he had betrayed, who had done him no other ill than refusing to aid his frantic impatience to overwhelm and crush a neighbour and friendly state. The following quantities of food-stuffs were at once demanded from Brussels by the German army and delivered: On 21st August, 30,000 kilos of bread, 5000 kilos of smoked meat, 17,000 kilos live-stock, 10,000 kilos of rice, 1400 kilos of coffee, 1700 kilos of sugar, 700 kilos of cacao, 1700 kilos of salt, 120,000 kilos of oats, 170 kilos of tea, 10,000 litres of wine. On 22nd August, the same amount, save that the bread was reduced to 20,000 kilos, with an addition of 20,000 kilos of flour.