Worthy of England at her best was her consent to allow the Commission’s food to pass, which she accompanied by generous giving. She might be slow in making ready her army, but give she could and give she did. It was a grave question if her consent was in keeping with the military policy which believes that any concession to sentiment in the grim business of war is unwise. Certainly, the _Krieg ist Krieg_ of Germany would not have permitted it. There is the very point of the war that makes a neutral take sides. If the Belgians had not received bread from the outside world, then Germany would either have had to spare enough to keep them from starving or faced the desperation of a people who fight for food with such weapons as they had. This must have meant a holocaust of reprisals that would have made the orgy of Louvain comparatively unimportant. However much the Germans hampered the Commission with red tape and worse than red tape through the activities of German residents in Belgium, Germany did not want the Commission to withdraw. It was helping her to economise her food supplies. And England answered a human appeal at the cost of hard and fast military policy. She was still true to the ideals which have set their stamp on half the world. XII WINTER IN LORRAINE Paris resuming normality--Regular train service--Nancy under fire-- By automobile to the front--Panorama of the contested lines-- View of the German wedge--French veterans--Ancient Lorraine-- A vision of battle--Résumé of the struggle--The first German advance--“The face of the earth sown with shells”--The Kaiser silenced--The German Lorraine campaign lost--Visit to a French heavy battery--Underground quarters--A policed army--Military simplicity. Only a winding black streak, that four hundred and fifty miles of trenches on a flat map. It is difficult to visualise the whole as you see it in your morning paper, or to realise the labour it represents in its course through the mire and over mountain slopes, through villages and thick forests and across open fields. Every mile of it was located by the struggle of guns and rifles and men coming to a stalemate of effort, when both dug into the earth and neither could budge the other. It is a line of countless battles and broken hopes; of as brave charges as men ever made; a symbol of skill and dogged patience and eternal vigilance of striving foe against striving foe.