and
prevented the feud between the rulers and the ruled from becoming
more embittered.

Sniping over, the next step in policy was to keep the population quiet
with a minimum of soldiery, which would permit a maximum at the
front. In a thickly-settled country, so easily policed, in a land with the
population inured to peace, the wisdom of keeping quiet was soon
evident to the people. What if Boers had been in the Belgians' place?
Would they have attempted guerrilla warfare? Would you or I want to
bring destruction on neighbours in a land without any rural fastnesses
as a rendezvous for operations? One could tell only if a section of our
country were invaded.

A burned block cost less than a dead German soldier. The system
was efficacious. It was mercilessness mixed with craft. When
Prussian brusqueness was found to be unnecessarily irritating to the
population, causing rash Belgians to turn desperate, the elders of the
Saxon and Bavarian coreligionists were called in. They were amiable
fathers of families, who would obey orders without taking the law into
their own hands. The occupation was strictly military. It concerned
itself with the business of national suffocation. All the functions of
government were in German hands. But Belgian policemen guided
the street traffic, arrested culprits for ordinary misdemeanours, and
took them before Belgian judges. This concession, which also meant
a saving in soldiers, only aggravated to the Belgian the regulations
directed against his personal freedom.

"Eat, drink, and live as usual. Go to your own police courts for
misdemeanours," was the German edict in a word; "but remember
that ours is the military power, and no act that aids the enemy, that
helps the cause of Belgium in this war, is permitted. Observe that
particular affiche about a spy, please. He was shot."

At every opportunity Belgians were told that the British and the
French could never come to their rescue. The Allies were beaten. It
was the British who got Belgium into trouble; the British who were
responsible for the idleness, the penury, the hunger and the suffering
in Belgium. The British had used Belgium as a cat's-paw; then they
had deserted her. But Belgians remained mostly unconvinced. They
were making war with mind and spirit, if not with arms.

"We know how to suffer in Belgium," said a Belgian jurist. "Our ability
to suffer and to hold fast to our hearths has kept us going through the
centuries. Fle