lomatist.

VIII
In Belgium Under The Germans

No week at the front, where war is made, left the mind so full as this
week beyond the sound of the guns with war's results. It taught the
meaning of the simple words life and death, hunger and food, love
and hate. One was in a house with sealed doors where a family of
seven millions sat in silence and idleness, thinking of nothing but war
and feeling nothing but war. He had war cold as the fragments of an
exploded shell beside a dead man on a frozen road; war analysed
and docketed for exhibition, without its noise, its distraction, and its
hot passion.

In Ostend I had seen the Belgian refugees in flight, and I had seen
them pouring into London stations, bedraggled outcasts of every
class, with the staring uncertainty of the helpless human flock flying
from the storm. England, who considered that they had suffered for
her sake, opened her purse and her heart to them; she opened her
homes, both modest suburban homes and big country houses which
are particular about their guests in time of peace. No British family
without a Belgian was doing its duty. Bishop's wife and publican's wife
took whatever Belgian was sent to her. The refugee packet arrived
without the nature of contents on the address tag. All Belgians had
become heroic and noble by grace of the defenders of Liege.

Perhaps the bishop's wife received a young woman who smoked
cigarettes, and asked her hostess for rouge, and the publican's wife
received a countess. Mrs. Smith, of Clapham, who had brought up
her children in the strictest propriety, welcomed as play-mates for her
dears, whom she had kept away from the contaminating associations
of the alleys, Belgian children from the toughest quarters of Antwerp,
who had a precocity that led to baffling confusion in Mrs. Smith's mind
between parental responsibility and patriotic duty. Smart society gave
the run of its houses sometimes to gentry who were used to getting
the run of that kind of houses by lifting a window with a jemmy on a
dark night. It was a refugee lottery. When two hosts met one said:
"My Belgian is charming!" and the other said: "Mine isn't. Just listen--"

But the English are game; they are loyal; they bear their burden of
hospitality bravely.

The strange things that happened were not the more agreeable
because of the attitude of some refugees who, when they were
getting better fare than they ever had at home, thought that, as the