Zealous leaders exaggerated the famine of their districts in order to get larger supplies; communities in great need without spokesmen must be reached; powerful towns found excuses for not forwarding food to small villages which were without influence. Natural greed got the better of men used to turning a penny anyway they could. Rascally bakers who sifted the brown flour to get the white to sell to _patisseries_ and the well-to-do, while the bread line got the bran, required shrewd handling when the only means of punishment was through German authority. “The local burgomaster yesterday offered to sell me some of your Commission’s flour,” wrote a German commandant. “I bought it and have the receipt, in order to prove to you that these Belgians are what we say they are--a vile people. I am turning the flour over to your Commission. We said that we would not take any of it and the German Government keeps its word.” How that commandant enjoyed making that score! As for the burgomaster, he was proscribed in a way that will brand him among his fellow-citizens for life. When German soldiers took bread from families where they were billeted, the German Government turned over an amount of flour equivalent to the bread consumed. A certain percentage of Belgians saw the invasion only as a visitation of disaster, like an earthquake. A flat country of gardens limits one’s horizon. They fell in line with the sentiment of the mass. But as time wore on into the summer and autumn of the second year, some of them began to think, What was the use? German propaganda was active. All that the Allies had cared for Belgium was to use her to check the German tide to Paris and the Channel ports! Perfidious England had betrayed Belgium! German business and banking influences, which had been considerable in Belgium before the war, and the numerous German residents who had returned, formed a busy circle of appeal to Belgian business men, who were told that the British navy stood between them and a return to prosperity. Germany was only too willing that they should resume their trade with the rest of the world. Why should not Belgium come into the German customs union? Why should not Belgium make the best of her unfortunate situation, as became a practical and thrifty people? But be it a customs union or annexation that Germany plans, the steel had entered the hearts of all Belgians with red corpuscles; and King Albert and his _shipperkes_ were still fighting the Germans at Dixmude. A British army appearing before Brussels would end casuistry; and pessimism would pass, and the German residents, too, with the huzzas of all Belgium as the gallant King once more ascended the steps of his palace.