ptations to crime and insubordination which naturally
attend an idle manufacturing population of some 125,000 people, there
were very few civilian offenses against the law, German or French, among
the inhabitants of Roubaix.

[Sidenote: Time hangs heavily.]

Time hung heavily on our hands. Cut off from the outer world except by
the occasional arrival of smuggled French and English newspapers, we
spent our time reading and playing cards, and at the last I hoped I
might never be reduced to this form of amusement again. In the two and a
half years cut out of my life and completely wasted I played as many
games of cards as will satisfy me for the rest of my existence.

[Sidenote: The gendarmerie called "Green devils."]

But even if the inhabitants, in their enforced idleness, had any
temptation to be insubordinate, they had a far greater inducement to
keep the law in the bridled savagery of the German gendarmerie. These
creatures, who from the color of their uniform and the brutality of
their conduct were known as the "green devils," seemed to revel in sheer
cruelty. They scour the towns on bicycles and the outlying districts on
horseback, always accompanied by a dog as savage as his master, and at
the slightest provocation or without even the slenderest pretext they
fall upon civilians with brutish violence.

[Sidenote: Women badly treated.]

It was not uncommon for one of these men to chase a woman on his
bicycle, and when he had caught her, batter her head and body with the
machine. Many times they would strike women with the flat of their
sabres. One of them was seen to unleash his dog against an old woman,
and laugh when the savage beast tore open the woman's flesh from thigh
to knee.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Crossing Belgium.]

In January Mr. Whitaker crossed the line into Belgium with the aid of
smuggler friends, traversed that country, chiefly on foot, and two
months later escaped into Holland and so to England. In Belgium he was
astonished to find what looked like prosperity when compared with
conditions in the occupied provinces of France. After expressing
gratitude to Belgian friends and a desire to tell only what is truth, he
proceeds:

[Sidenote: No sign of privations.]

The first fact I have to declare is that nowhere in my wanderings did I
see any sign of starvation. Nowhere did I notice such privation of food
as I had known in Northern France. Near the French fronti