And to think that this is but one of thousands of cases for ever haunted by their own hideousness, for ever dependent on others. Such things as this it is that have wrought us to such a pitch of indignation that the words are apt to escape our lips, "God strafe Germany, the author of this devastation!"
[CHAPTER XVII]
February, 1916
February 3rd. To-day we are debating as to whether or not a genuine spy has been within our grasp and wriggled out again. The sum of the matter is this:
Boarding a crowded tram on its way into town, we were fain to avoid the closeness of the over-crowded interior by standing on the conductor's more airy platform. The conductor himself, an ill-grown little Belgian réformé, seemed pleased enough of company, judging by the avidity with which he poured forth his sorrows into our sympathetic ears.
Since the fall of Antwerp he has had no word from his young wife, nor has he been able to get a line through to her to inform her that he is alive. His terror lest she should wed again before his return was pathetic.
"Hélas!" he kept sighing. "Has not Belgium suffered more than all countries put together?"
We did not rejoin, as we might well have done, that valiant Belgium's losses can only be compared with the sum of English lives expended in maintaining, maybe for sentimental as much as strategical reasons, that little hell round Ypres that represents all that remains of King Albert's country; for at about this moment a dark man in some kind of police uniform joined in the conversation.