She has kept the faith. She saw it with the
eyes of duty and honor. Her Government is carried on in another land.
Her King is in the trenches. Her army is decimated, but the last
decimals fight on.
Her people wander in foreign lands, the highest and lowest looking for
work and bread; they cannot look for homes. Those left behind huddle
near the ruins of their shattered villages or take refuge in towns which
cannot feed their own citizens.
Abyss of Want and Woe.
Many cities and towns have been completely destroyed; others, reduced or
shattered, struggle in vain to feed their poor and broken populations.
Stones and ashes mark the places where small communities lived their
peaceful lives before the invasion. The Belgian people live now in the
abyss of want and woe.
All this I knew in England, but knew it from the reports of others. I
did not, could not, know what the destitution, the desolation of Belgium
was, what were the imperative needs of this people, until I got to
Holland and to the borders of Belgian territory. Inside that territory I
could not pass because I was a Britisher, but there I could see German
soldiers, the Landwehr, keeping guard over what they call their new
German province.
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