He had been warned by the Commission not to talk
and he did not talk. He was neutrality personified. All he did was to
show his pass. He could be silent in three languages. The only time I
got anything like partisanship out of him and two sentences in
succession was when I mentioned the Harvard-Yale football game.
"My! Wasn't that a smear! In their new stadium, too! Oh, my! Wish I
had been there!"

When the car broke a spring half-way to Antwerp, he remarked,
"Naturally!" or, rather, a more expressive monosyllable which did not
sound neutral.

While he and the Belgian chauffeur, with the help of a Belgian farmer
as spectator, were patching up the broken spring, I had a look at the
farm. The winter crops were in; the cabbages and Brussels sprouts in
the garden were untouched. It happened that the scorching finger of
war's destruction had not been laid on this little property. In the yard
the wife was doing the week's washing, her hands in hot water and
her arms exposed to weather so cold that I felt none too warm in a
heavy overcoat. At first sight she gave me a frown, which instantly
dissipated into a smile when she saw that I was not German.

If not German, I must be a friend. Yet if I were I would not dare talk--
not with German sentries all about. She lifted her hand from the suds
and swung it out to the west toward England and France with an
eager, craving fire in her eyes, and then she swept it across in front of
her as if she were sweeping a spider off a table. When it stopped at
arm's length there was the triumph of hate in her eyes. I thought of
the lid of a cauldron raised to let out a burst of steam as she asked
"When?" When? When would the Allies come and turn the Germans
out?

She was a kind, hardworking woman, who would help any stranger in
trouble the best she knew how. Probably that Saxon whose smile had
spread under his scarf had much the same kind of wife. Yet I knew
that if the Allies' guns were heard driving the Germans past her
house and her husband had a rifle, he would put a shot in that
Saxon's back, or she would pour boiling water on his head if she
could. Then, if the Germans had time, they would burn the farmhouse
and kill the husband who had shot one of their comrades.

I recollect a youth who had been in a railroad accident saying: "That
was the first time I had ever seen death; the first time I realized what
death was." Exactly. You don't know death till you have seen it; you
don't kn