It was absurd to argue with the little man in a sodden field on the road to Liège. Besides, though I saw weak links in his chain of reasoning, I did not want to argue. I wanted to believe also that our victory would not be a mere vulgar triumph of the old kind, one military power rising upon the ruins of its rival, one great yell (or many) of “Yah!--we told you so!” but that it would be a victory for all humanity, shamed by the degradation of its orgy of blood, in spite of all pride in long-enduring manhood, and that the peoples of the world, with one common, enormous, generous instinct, would cry out, “The horror has passed! Never again shall it come upon us.... Let us pay back to the dead by contriving a better way of life for them who follow!” The chance of that lay with living youth, if they would not allow themselves to be betrayed by their Old Men. That also was a mighty “If,” but I clung to the hope with as passionate a faith as that of the little American doctor.... The way to the Rhine lay through many cities liberated from hostile rule, through many wonderful scenes in which emotion surged like a white flame above great crowds. There was a pageantry of life, which I had never before seen in war or in peace, and those of us who went that way became dazed by the endless riot of colour, and our ears were tired by a tumult of joyous sound. In Brussels, Bruges, Ghent, Liège, Namur, Verviers, banners waved above every house. Flags--flags--flags, of many nations and designs, decorated the house-fronts, were draped on the balconies, were entwined in the windows, came like flames above the heads of marching crowds. Everywhere there was the sound of singing by multitudes, and through those weeks one song was always in the air, triumphant, exultant, intoxicating, almost maddening in its effect upon crowds and individuals--the old song of liberty and revolt: “_La Marseillaise_.” With it, not so universal, but haunting in constant refrain between the outbursts of that other tune, they sang “_La Brabançonne_” of Belgium, and quaint old folk-songs that came to life again with the spirit of the people. Bells pealed from churches in which the Germans had left them by special favour. The belfry of Bruges had not lost its carillon. In Ghent when the King of the Belgians rode in along flower-strewn ways under banners that made one great canopy, while cheers swept up and around him, to his grave, tanned, melancholy face, unchanged by victory--so I had seen him in his ruined towns among his dead--I heard the great boom of the Cathedral bell. In Brussels, when he rode in later, there were many bells ringing and clashing, and wild cheering which to me, lying in an upper room, after a smash on the Field of Waterloo, seemed uncanny and inhuman, like the murmur of innumerable ghost-voices. Into these towns, and along the roads through Belgium to the Meuse, bands were playing and soldiers singing, and on each man’s rifle was a flag or a flower.