It was early in the war then, and between Ypres and the sea stretched a long thin line of Belgian trenches. A frantic Belgian Government, thrust out of its own land, was facing the problem, with scant funds and with no _matériel_ of any sort, for feeding that desolate little army. France had her own problems--her army, non-productive industrially, and the great and constantly growing British forces quartered there, paying for what they got, but requiring much. The world knows now of the starvation of German-occupied Belgium. What it does not know and may never know is of the struggle during those early days to feed the heroic Belgian Army in their wet and almost untenable trenches. Hospital trains they could improvise out of what rolling stock remained to them. Money could be borrowed, and was. But food? Clothing? Ammunition? In his little villa on the seacoast the Belgian King knew that his soldiers were hungry, and paced the floor of his tiny living-room; and over in an American city whose skyline was as pointed with furnace turrets as Constantinople's is with mosques, over there Sara Lee heard that call of hunger, and--put on her engagement ring. Later on that evening, with Harvey's wide cheerful face turned adoringly to her, Sara Lee formulated a question: "Don't you sometimes feel as though you'd like to go to France and fight?" "What for?" "Well, they need men, don't they?" "I guess they don't need me, honey. I'd be the dickens of a lot of use! Never fired a gun in my life." "You could learn. It isn't hard." Harvey sat upright and stared at her. "Oh, if you want me to go--" he said, and waited. Sara Lee twisted her ring on her finger. "Nobody wants anybody to go," she said not very elegantly. "I'd just--I'd rather like to think you wanted to go." That was almost too subtle for Harvey. Something about him was rather reminiscent of Uncle James on mornings when he was determined not to go to church. "It's not our fight," he said. "And as far as that goes, I'm not so sure there isn't right on both sides. Or wrong. Most likely wrong. I'd look fine going over there to help the Allies, and then making up my mind it was the British who'd spilled the beans. Now let's talk about something interesting--for instance, how much we love each other." It was always "we" with Harvey. In his simple creed if a girl accepted a man and let him kiss her and wore his ring it was a reciprocal love affair. It never occurred to him that sometimes as the evening dragged toward a close Sara Lee was just a bit weary of his arms, and that she sought, after he had gone, the haven of her little white room, and closed the door, and had to look rather a long time at his photograph before she was in a properly loving mood again. But that night after his prolonged leave-taking Sara Lee went upstairs to her room and faced the situation.