d by him to remove her
tricolour rosette. She refused to do so, and, as he threatened her,
defied him to do it himself. The Boche seized the rosette and pulled ..
and pulled .. and pulled. The lady had concealed twenty yards of ribbon
in her corsage.

When the tricolour was forbidden altogether, it was replaced by the
ivyleaf, ivy being the emblem of faithfulness; later, the ivyleaf was
followed by a green ribbon, green being the colour of hope. The
Brabanconne being excluded from the street and from the school took
refuge in the Churches, where it is played and often sung by the
congregation at the end of the service. There are many ways of getting
round the law. The Belgians were forbidden to celebrate in any ordinary
way the anniversary of their independence. Thanks to a sort of tacit
arrangement they succeeded in marking the occasion in spite of all
regulations. On July 21st, 1915, the Bruxellois kept the shutters of
their houses and shops closed and went out in the streets dressed in
their best clothes, most of them in mourning. The next year, as the
closing of shops was this time foreseen by the administration, they
remained open. But a great number of tradespeople managed ingeniously to
display the national colours in their windows--by the juxtaposition, for
instance, of yellow lemons, red tomatoes and black grapes. Others
emptied their windows altogether.

These jokes may seem childish, at first sight, but when we think that
those who dared perform them paid for it with several months'
imprisonment or several thousand marks, and paid cheerily, we understand
that there is more in them than a schoolboy's pranks. It seems as if the
Belgian spirit would break if it ceased to be able to react. One of the
shop-managers who was most heavily fined on the occasion of our last
"Independence Day" declared that he had not lost his money: "It is
rather expensive, but it is worth it."

* * * * *

If patriotism has become a religion in Belgium, this religion has found
a priest whose authority is recognised by the last unbeliever. If every
church has become the "_Temple de la Patrie_," if the Brabanconne
resounds under the Gothic arches of every nave, Cardinal Mercier has
become the good shepherd who has taken charge of the flock during the
King's absence. The great Brotherhood, for which so many Christian souls
are yearning, in which there are no more classes, parties, and sects,
seems well