ns of any orator had this
greeting of a little child operated to smite him with the senseless
folly of this war. Who knows but that right then there came flashing
into his mind the thought: "Why not be done with this cruel
orphaning of Belgian babies, this burning down of their homes and
turning them adrift upon the world?"

Brutalizing as may be the effect of militarism in action, fortified as
its devotees may be by all the iron ethics of its code, I cannot help
but believe that here again the ever-recurring miracle of
repentance and regeneration had been wrought by the grace of a
baby's smile; that again this stern-visaged officer had become just
a human being longing for peace and home, revolting against
laying waste the peace and homes of his fellowmen. But to what
avail? All things would conspire to make him conform and stifle the
revolt within. How could he escape from the toils in which he was
held? Next morrow or next week he would again be in the saddle
riding out to destruction.

The irony of history again! It was this German folk who said,
centuries ago: "No religious authority shall invade the sacred
precincts of the soul and compel men to act counter to their
deepest convictions." In a costly struggle the fetters of the church
were broken. But now a new iron despotism is riveted upon them.
The great state has become the keeper of men's consciences.
The dragooning of the soul goes on just the same. Only the power
to do it has been transferred from the priests to the officers of the
state. To compel men to kill when their whole beings cry out
against it, is an atrocity upon the souls of men as real as any
committed upon the bodies of the Belgians.

Amidst the wild exploits and wilder rumors of those crucial days
when Belgium was the central figure in the world-war, the
calmness of the natives was a source of constant wonder. In the
regions where the Germans had not yet come they went on with
their accustomed round of eating, drinking and trading with a sang
froid that was distressing to the fevered outsider.

Yet beneath this surface calmness and gayety ran a smoldering
hate, of whose presence one never dreamed, unless he saw it
shoot out in an ugly flare.

I saw this at Antwerp when about 300 of us had been herded into
one of the great halls. As one by one the suspects came up to the
exit gate to be overhauled by the examiners, I thought that there
never could be such a complacent, dead-souled crowd