must have been highly gratifying to His Self-inflated Highness. The
highly gratifying thing to myself now is the fact that I did not do any
crawling, but sat stolidly in my chair and stared back at him, letting
my indignation get enough the better of my discretion even to
sneer--at least I persuade myself now that I did. Outside of this
little act of gallantry I am heartily ashamed of my conduct at the
German Staff Headquarters. It was too acquiescent and obsequious
for some of those bureaucrats rough riding it over those helpless,
long-suffering, beaten Belgians.

Having called us "Schwein," at high noon they brought in the swill.
It was a gray, putrid-looking mess in a big, battered bucket. They
told us that it came dried in bags and all that was necessary was to
mix the contents with hot water. The mixture was put up in 1911
and guaranteed to keep for 20 years. It looked as though it might
have already forfeited on its guarantee. There was nothing to
serve it with, and search of the room uncovered no implements of
attack. Our discomfiture furnished a young soldier with much
entertainment.

"Nothing to eat your stew with? Well, just stand on that table there
and dive right into the bucket."

He was quite carried away with his own witticism, so that in sheer
good nature he went and returned with six soup plates which were
covered over with a thick grease quite impervious to cold water. I
had my misgivings about the mess and dreaded its steaming
odors. At last I summoned up courage and approached the
bucket, using my fingers in lieu of a clothes-pin as a defense for
my olfactory nerves. A surprise was in store for me; its palatability
and quality were quite the opposite of its appearance. While I
wouldn't enjoy that stew outside of captivity, and while the Brussels
men refused in any way to succumb to its charm, it was at least
very nutritious and furnished the strength to keep fighting.

But it is hard to battle against the blues, especially when all one's
comrades capitulate to them. Each man vied with the other in
radiating a blue funk, until the air was as thick as a London fog.

Picture, if you will, the scene. By a fine irony, the books on the
shelves were on international law, and by a finer irony the book in
green binding that caught my eye as it stood out from the black
array of volumes was R. Dimmont's "The Origins of Belgian
Neutrality." The Belgians who were enjoying the peculiar blessings
of that neu