By the time our beds were demanded, and armed men forced their way even into the poorest homes to rob the cold and hungry Belgians of their last remnant of comfort, the change in the soldiers’ sentiments became even more marked. Beds were taken, often from under the owners before they had risen in the morning, but in many cases there was a noticeable indifference shown by those who did the looting. The men who came to our house only took two mattresses, and made no attempt to search for wool that was hidden. One of them expressed very bitterly his distaste for the duty imposed on him, and said, among other startling remarks: “The whole war is an outrage imposed upon us Germans by our leaders, who must pay for it some day not far distant”! Another, whom I met in a shop, told me that if he had not a wife and little children in Germany he would never return to the Vaterland he had been falsely lured to protect. At mention of the Kaiser, he exclaimed savagely: “_Kaiser!—Ach, der Kaiser!_—Wait until the troops get back to Germany! There will be an accounting then!” and drew his finger significantly across his throat. It was unspeakably pathetic at this time to see the war-weary, ill-clad, and under-fed German troops returning from the front to Brussels; especially those called back to the trenches, after a rest too brief to revive their strength, or dim their recollection of horrors endured. These poor, heavily laden slaves, many so young, with a look of yearning for home in their wide, helpless eyes, called for sympathy despite the wrong they represented. No voice acclaimed them, as they strode through a hating city to give up their lives for a monstrous error; but many of those who watched forgot, for a moment, past suffering to express a word of compassion unheard, alas, by those columns of desperate human beings—beings forced back to be massacred on foreign land, merely for the vanity of their ruler—merely that the German Kaiser’s long-cherished and carefully perfected military toy might avoid the disgrace even then inevitable! It was galling to better-class Belgians to note about this time a certain friendliness developing between the German soldiers and common people. At the markets, where soldiers swarmed, it was no rare sight to see girls hanging to their arms, and even older women talking and joking with them. The reason of this was not indifference to all that Belgium had suffered at German hands, but because to these people the soldiers spoke more openly. By dint of constant association they learned that all Germans were not criminals, that many hundreds of the men had been ignorant of the true situation—men who, awaking too late, were conscious of the injustice done and bitter against the power that had deceived and enslaved them.