Through the Iron Bars | Page 6

of Belgium which they wore. Stories passed from lip to lip. Their accuracy I would not guarantee, but they belong to the epic of the war and are true to the spirit of the people. A young lady, who was jeered at by a German officer because she was wearing King Albert's portrait, is said to have answered his "Lackland" with, "I would rather have a King who has lost his country than an Emperor who has lost his honour." Another lady, sitting in a tram-car opposite a German officer, was ordered 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 Braban?onne 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 Braban?onne 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 nigh achieved beyond the electrified barbed wire of the Belgian frontier. Are not all Belgians threatened with the same danger, are they not close-knit by the same hope, the same love, the same hatred?
When the bells rang from the towers of Brussels Cathedral on July 21st last, when, in his red robes, Cardinal Mercier blessed the people assembled to celebrate the day of Belgium's Independence, it seemed that the soul of the martyred nation hovered in the Church. After the national anthem, people lifted their eyes towards the great crucifix in the choir, and could no longer distinguish, through their tears, the image of the Crucified from that of their bleeding country.

III.
THE POISONED WELLS.
We must never forget, when we speak of the moral resistance of the Belgian people, that they have been completely isolated from their friends abroad for more than two years and that meanwhile they have been exposed to all the systematic and skilful manoeuvres of German propaganda. Not only are they without news from abroad, but all the news they receive is calculated to spread discouragement and distrust.
How true lovers could resist a long separation and the most wicked calumnies without losing faith in one another has been the theme of many a story. From the story-writer's point of view, the true narrative of the German occupation of Belgium is much more romantic than any romance, much more wonderful than any poem. The mass is not supposed to show the same constancy as the individual, and one does not expect from a whole people the ideal loyalty of Desdemona and Imogen. Besides, we do not want the reader to imagine that, before the war, the Belgians were ideally in love with one another. Like the English, the Americans and