This beautiful city on the Meuse escaped the ruin visited on other parts of her province. In fact, all the four largest cities of Belgium escaped, in each case a smaller neighboring town, especially picturesque, stands as an example of destruction and warning. Belgians ask if it was not with the obvious intent of cowing the near-by capital, that Dinant was made an example to Namur, Nimy to Mons, Louvain to Brussels? They point out that tho only the ghost of lovely Visée remains, Liége itself has lost but about 100 buildings. After the final inevitable surrender of her forts, the attacking army passed on, leaving her under powerful control. But tho the material damage was small, as the populous center of a great industrial region, this city was one of the first to realize the distress that followed the occupation and isolation of Belgium. One by one her famous firearm factories and glass mills closed their doors, and poured their thousands of workmen into the streets. In many cases the factories were dismantled, the machinery taken to Germany to make munitions. And this was happening all through the province, so that by 1915 it counted 90,000 idle workmen (chômeurs), and in the capital alone, fully 18,000. Ordinarily (among her 180,000 inhabitants) Liége lists 43,000 skilled workmen; so for her the proportion of idle was almost one-half; with their families they represented but little less than one-quarter of the entire population. The 4,000 employed in the coal mines, which, fortunately, were able to keep open, were the one saving factor in the situation. The question of chômage, or unemployment, is the most serious the relief organization has had to face. It has been most acute in the two Flanders; but in Antwerp, with its 25,000 idle dock hands, in the highly industrial Hainaut, in Namur and Brabant, as well as in Liége, there have been special circumstances developing particular difficulties. Over 665,000 workmen without work, representing millions of dependents, would present a sufficiently critical problem to a country not at war. One can imagine what it means to a country every square foot of which is controlled by an enemy so hated that the conquered would risk all the evils of continued non-employment rather than have any of its people serve in any way the ends of the invader. Better roads, better railways, mean greater facility for the Germans. None of the leaders I have talked with have been satisfied with the system evolved, but no one has yet been able to substitute a better.