The realization that victory was in sight came upon us in Brussels with the dazing suddenness of a comet in a starless night. The first evidence of Germany’s collapse was the sudden and astonishing independence of soldiers toward their superiors. We wondered at this for a day or two; then the truth burst on us with an avalanche of disbanded troops, from the _étape_ regions, who, flinging off all control, arrived in groups of twenty, more or less. No red flag could be seen among them, nothing explained their strange advent save their look of desperate weariness. So quietly they came that at first everyone believed they were returning on furlough, bearing with them booty seized on the way from the houses and farms of fugitives. Until the time when their increasing numbers attracted even the puzzled attention of children, there was no relaxation of the iron hand. Even when the red flag of rebellion was glaring defiance of the Kaiser and his flatterers, the daily papers offered us their usual official lies. William the Second’s “invincible armies” were represented as still resisting the world; the Allies had been checked at this point or that; and the Belgians again were called upon to consider the dire consequences to themselves and their country of continuation of the war. And this when the war was virtually ended! I think, from all evidence, the shock was as great to the occupying Powers as to us. They may have been more prepared than we for disaster, but they certainly seemed taken by surprise when that red flag appeared, waving at the head of their defeated troops. If the war came like a lightning-stroke, it went, so far as we could judge, like a falling star of incalculable speed. Most of us were too dazed to comprehend the meaning of events. Suddenly the pompous officer with shining helmet, loaded revolver, and dangling sword, who had reigned supreme in streets, cafés, and trams, disappeared.