My Year of the War. Frederick Palmer

      I was glad to be across that frontier, with a last stamp on my Passierschein; glad to be out of the land of those ghostly Belgian millions in their living death; glad not to have to answer again their ravenously whispered "When?" When would the Allies come?

      The next time that I was in Belgium it was in the British lines of the Ypres salient, two months later. When should I be next in Brussels? With a victorious British army, I hoped. A long wait it was to be for a conquered people, listening each day and trying to think that the sound of gun-fire was nearer.

      The stubborn, passive resistance and self-sacrifice that I have pictured was that of a moral leadership of a majority shaming the minority; of an ostracism of all who had relations with the enemy. Of course, it was not the spirit of the whole. The American Commission, as charity usually must, had to overcome obstacles set in its path by those whom it would aid. Belgian politicians, in keeping with the weakness of their craft, could no more forego playing politics in time of distress than some that we had in San Francisco and some we have heard of only across the British Channel from Belgium.