n people day in and day out, diplomatic, watchful,
Belgian. And he was cheerful. What other people could have retained
any vestige of cheer! Sometimes one wondered if it were not partly
due to an absence of keen nerve-sensibilities, or to some other of the
traits which are a product of the Belgian hothouse and Belgian
inheritance.

I might tell you about M. Nerincx's currency system; how he issued
paper promises to pay when he gave employment to the idle in
repairing those houses which permitted of being repaired, and
cleaned the streets of debris, till ruined Louvain looked as shipshape
as ruined Pompeii; and how he got a little real money from Brussels
to stop depreciation when the storekeepers came to him and said
that they had stacks of his notes which no mercantile concern would
cash.

M. Nerincx was practising in the life about all that he ever learned and
taught at the university, "which we shall rebuild!" he declared, with
cheery confidence. "You will help us in America," he said. "I'm going
to America to lecture one of these days about Louvain!"

"You have the most famous ruins, unless it is Rheims," I assured him.
"You will get flocks of tourists"--particularly if he fenced in the ruins
of the library and burned leaves of ancient books were on sale.

"Then you will not only have fed, but have helped to rebuild Belgium,"
he added.

A shadow of apprehension overhung his anticipation of the day of
Belgium's delivery. Many a Belgian had arms hidden from the alert
eye of German espionage, and his bitterness was solaced by the
thought; "I'll have a shot at the Germans when they go!" The lot of the
last German soldier to leave a town, unless the garrison slips away
overnight, would hardly make him a good life-insurance risk.

My last look at a Belgian bread-line was at Liege, that town which
had had a blaze of fame in August, 1914, and was now almost
forgotten. An industrial town, its mines and works were idle. The
Germans had removed the machinery for rifle-making, which has
become the most valuable kind of machinery in the world next to that
for making guns and shells. If skilled Belgians here or elsewhere were
called upon to serve the Germans at their craft, they suddenly
became butter-fingered. So that bread-line at Liege was long, its
queue stretching the breadth of the cathedral square.

As most of the regular German officers in Belgium were cavalrymen--
there was nothing for cavalry to do on the Aisne