“It has just occurred to me that my guidebook states that passports are not required in Belgium!” I explained. The editor of that guidebook will have a busy time before he issues the next edition. For example, he will have a lot of new information about Malines, whose ruins were revealed by the motor lamps in shadowy, broken walls on either side of the main street. Other places where less damage had been done were equally silent. In the smaller towns and villages the population must keep indoors at night; for egress and ingress are more difficult to control there than in large cities, where guards at every corner suffice--watching, watching, these disciplined pawns of remorselessly efficient militarism; watching every human being in Belgium. “The last time I saw that statue of Liége,” I remarked, peering into the darkness as we rode into the city, “the Legion of Honour conferred by France on Liége for its brave defence was hung on its breast. I suppose it is gone now.” “I guess yes,” said Harvard, 1914. We went to the hotel at Brussels which I had left the day before the city’s fall. English railway signs on the walls of the corridor had not been disturbed. More ancient relic still seemed a bulletin board with its announcement of seven passages a day to England, traversing the Channel in “fifty-five minutes _via_ Calais” and “three hours _via_ Ostend,” with the space blank where the state of the weather for the despair or the delight of intending voyagers had been chalked up in happier days. The same men were in attendance at the office as before; but they seemed older and their politeness that of cheerless automatons. For five months they had been serving German officers as guests with hate in their hearts and, in turn, trying to protect their property. A story is told of how that hotel had filled with officers after the arrival of the Germanic flood and how one day, when it was learned that the proprietor was a Frenchman, guards were suddenly placed at the doors and the hall was filled with baggage as every officer, acting with characteristic official solidarity, vacated his room and bestowed his presence elsewhere. Then the proprietor was informed that his guests would return if he would agree to employ German help and buy his supplies from Germany. He refused, for practical as well as for sentimental reasons. If he had consented, think what the Belgians would have done to him after the Germans were gone! However, officers were gradually returning, for this was the best hotel in town, and even conquerors are human and German conquerors have particularly human stomachs. X CHRISTMAS IN BELGIUM