I. The Prison Gates II. The Lowered Flag III. The Poisoned Wells IV. The Sacking of Belgium V. The Modern Slave (1. The Creeping Tide) V. The Modern Slave (2. "By the Waters of Babylon") VI. The Olive Branch Addendum: Cartoons by Louis Raemaekers  ...

The English-speaking public is generally well informed concerning the part played in the war by the Belgian troops. The resistance of our small field army at Liège, before Antwerp, and on the Yser has been praised and is still being praised wherever the tale runs. This is easy enough to understand. The fact that those 100,000 men should have been able to hold so long in check the forces of the first military Empire in Europe, and that a great number of them, helped by new contingents of recruits

The contrast which I have endeavoured to indicate, in the first chapter, between the attitude of the German administration before the fall of Antwerp and its behaviour afterwards is nowhere so well marked as in the measures taken for the purpose of repressing all Belgian manifestations of patriotism. During the two first months of occupation, the Germans made at least a show of respecting the loyal feelings of the population. In his first proclamation, dated September 2nd, in which he announced

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

We must now deal with the second factor which makes the conditions worse in Belgium than in Germany. While German peace-factories, ruined by the blockade, have been turned into war-factories, the majority of Belgian industries have remained idle. In spite of the high wages offered by the Germans—some skilled workmen were offered as much as £2 and £2 10s. per day—the workers resisted the constant pressure exerted upon them and preferred to live miserably on half-wages or with the help given them

"By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion." What prophetic spirit inspired Cardinal Mercier when he chose this psalm for the text of his sermon, on the occasion of the second anniversary of their Independence (July 21st, 1916), which the Belgians celebrated in exile and captivity? It was in the great Gothic church, in Brussels, under the arches of Ste. Gudule, at the close of a service for the soldiers fallen during the war, the very last patriotic cerem

We may ask ourselves if it was by chance only or through some subtle calculation that the first slave-raids in Belgium were timed to take place on the eve of the Christmas season, when the angels proclaimed "good-will towards men," and when the German diplomats offered us the olive branch and the dove—peace at their own price. We may perhaps admit, now that the crisis is over, that for us Belgians at least the temptation was great, and if our repeated experience of the enemy had not shown us tha