A German officer has frankly told us that the very smallest reprisal for any inimical act will be house-burning. Should a civilian dare to fire on the German troops, well, that village may expect to be decimated of its remaining men. Besides this the Teutons do not trust our word. Twice to-day an officer has forced me to drink first from his glass of beer. The young Job-Lepouses have to do the same. A suspicious Uhlan intends to run no unnecessary risk.
No peace for the wicked! There is the air peril to contend with. A sound often heard here, like a hundred threshing machines in full swing, made me think at first that the peasants were working in the fields. The mystery is solved when glancing far, far up where sky and cloud seem to meet, an aeroplane is seen buzzing slowly overhead. Sometimes we see it near enough to recognise its white body with the black tail-planes and tips to wings. German, of course, always German. We never have any other here. I watch the machine as it begins to descend at an acute angle. A thousand feet down, it hovers for a while. Finally, it planes earthwards like some great, ominous magpie until hidden from sight in the hollow of a distant field.
“One for sorrow.”
Another machine comes sailing majestically towards us from the nebulous distance.
“Two for mirth.”
It will take us all our time to derive any amusement from these bomb-dropping fiends....
A brain-wave has passed over the village. The word “red-cross” is mentioned. M. le Directeur suggests with admirable sense that the inn should be turned into a hospital for the wounded soldiers. Wonderful the enthusiasm this idea has evoked. Extraordinary the unanimity with which it is received by the peasants.
M. le Précepteur wishes to hang a flag out of his window too. His step becomes more elastic, his expression brighter at the mere idea. This seems to him an opportune way of staving off the awful, possible hour of arrest. He is actuated, too, by that beautiful sense of compassion which makes the Belgian nature so attractive.
The burnt-out old lady is quite vociferous with joy at the prospect of nursing the enemy. It never occurs to her that she will thereby heap coals of fire on the miscreants who so basely tried to destroy her little home. At this moment she is sitting out in the potato-patch industriously picking over the flock in her mattress. The adjacent hedge is hung with odds and ends of half-burnt coverlets and clothes. I know she is scheming in her generous Walloon brain how much of her slender household stock can be spared for the use of the wounded soldiers.
These flags—the great red cross on the white ground—are produced in the shortest space of time. We breathe more freely when they float out majestically from the hotel windows. We are as afire with first-aid enthusiasm as any ignorant sixteen-year-old Miss who has volunteered for the front. Every woman in the village has offered her help. She will insist on giving it too. I pity the first victim who arrives. He is likely to be pulled into a thousand pieces!