lsehood, to worship her Saints, in the face of calumny. She was
still able to resist, to oppose, every day and at every turn, her
patience to the enemy's threats and her cheerfulness to his ominous
scowl. She had a clear conscience and her hands were clean.

There is one thing that can be said for the Roman emperors, they seldom
starved their victims to death. Popular imagination revels in their
cruelty, and the _Golden Legend_ displays to us all the grim splendours
of a chamber of horrors. But the worst of all tortures--starvation--is
not often inflicted. The idea is, I suppose, that the conversion must be
sudden and striking. But Belgium's oppressors do not any longer want to
convert her. They have tried and they have failed. They merely want to
take all the food, all the raw materials, all the machines and--last but
not least--all the labour they can out of her. Their fight is not the
fight of one religion against another. It is the fight of material power
against any philosophy, any religion which stands between it and the
things which it covets. The Germans do not sacrifice Belgium to their
gods. Such an ideal course is far from their thoughts. They sacrifice
Belgium to Germany--that is, to themselves. It matters very little
whether a slave is able to speak or to think, as long as he is able to
work.

Here again, in spite of the wholesale plundering of the first days of
occupation, and of the enormous fines imposed on towns and provinces, I
do not suppose that the German plan was deliberately to ruin the
country. It might even have been to develop its resources, as long as
there was some hope of annexing it, though this benevolent spirit had
scarcely any time to manifest itself. After the Marne and the Yser,
however, when it became evident that anyhow the whole of Belgium could
never be retained, and when the attitude of the people showed clearly
that they would always remain hostile to their new masters, the
systematic sacking of the country began without any thought for the
consequences.

* * * * *

The best way of coming to some appreciation of the work accomplished
during these two years is to remember that, before the war, Belgium was
the richest country in Europe in proportion to her size. Relatively she
had the greatest commercial activity, the richest agricultural
production, and she was more thickly populated than any other State,
with the exception of Saxony. Nowhere wer