hind the line of
guards on the Belgo-Dutch frontier; those who had remained at home
under the Germans to face humiliation and hunger. This was possible
if you had the right sort of influence and your passport the right sort of
vises to accompany a Bescheinigung, according to the form of "31
Oktober, 1914, Sect. 616, Nr. 1083," signed by the German consul at
Rotterdam, which put me in the same motor-car with Harvard, 1914,
that stopped one blustery, snowy day of late December before a
gate, with Belgium on one side and Holland on the other side of it, on
the Rosendaal-Antwerp road. "Once more!" said Harvard, 1914, who
had made this journey many times as a dispatch rider.

One of the conquerors, the sentry representing the majesty of
German authority in Belgium, examined the pass. The conqueror was
a good deal larger around the middle than when he was young, but
not so large as when he went to war. He had a scarf tied over his
ears under a cracked old patent-leather helmet, which the Saxon
Landsturm must have taken from their garrets when the Kaiser sent
the old fellows to keep the Belgians in order so that the young men
could be spared to get rheumatism in the trenches if they escaped
death.

You could see that the conqueror missed his wife's cooking and
Sunday afternoon in the beer garden with his family. However much
he loved the Kaiser, it did not make him love home any the less. His
nod admitted us into German-ruled Belgium. He looked so lonely that
as our car started I sent him a smile. Surprise broke on his face.
Somebody not a German in uniform had actually smiled at him in
Belgium!

My last glimpse of him was of a grin spreading under the scarf toward
his ears.

Belgium was webbed with these old Landsturm guards. If your
Passierschein was not right, you might survive the first set of sentries
and even the second, but the third, and if not the third some
succeeding one of the dozens on the way to Brussels, would hale you
before a Kommandatur. Then you were in trouble. In travelling about
Europe I became so used to passes that when I returned to New
York I could not have thought of going to Hoboken without the
German consul's visa or of dining at a French restaurant without the
French consul's.

"And again!" said Harvard, 1914, as we came to another sentry.
There was good reason why Harvard had his pass in a leather-bound
case under a celluloid face. Otherwise, it would soon have been worn
out in showing.