What strikes us now, when recalling this memorable ceremony, is not so much the address itself as the choice of its text: "For they that carried us away captive required of us a song." Many of those who listened to Cardinal Mercier on July 21st, 1916, have no doubt been "carried away" by now, and they have sung. They have sung the Brabançonne and the "Lion de Flandres" as a last defiance to their oppressors whilst those long cattle trains, packed with human cattle, rolled in wind and rain towards the German frontier. And the echo of their song still haunts the sleep of every honest man. * * * * * For whatever Germany may do or say, the time is no longer when such crimes can be left unpunished. Notwithstanding the war and the triumphant power of the mailed fist, there still exists such a thing as public conscience and public opinion. Nothing can happen, in any part of the world, without awakening an echo in the hearts of men who apparently are not at all concerned in the matter. The Germans are too clever not to understand this, and the endless trouble which they take in order to monopolise the news in neutral countries and to encounter every accusation with some more or less insidious excuse is the best proof of this. When one of them declared that Raemaekers' cartoons had done more harm to Germany than an army corps, he knew perfectly well what he was talking about. Only they rely so blindly on their own intellectual power and they have such a poor opinion of the brains of other people that they believe in first doing whatever suits their plans and then justify their action afterwards. They divide the work between themselves: The soldier acts, the lawyer and the professor undertakes to explain what he has done. However black the first may become, there is plenty of whitewash ready to restore his innocence. If the unexpected resistance of Belgium has infuriated the Germans to such an extent, it is not only because it wrecked their surprise attack on France, it is also because, even after the retreat of the army, they have been confronted by a series of men courageous enough and clever enough to stand their ground and to come between them and the uneducated mass of the population.