In a way, it is true! Their uniforms are ragged, stained, burnt, torn, too big, too little, full of a hundred pitiful little discrepancies that peep out under those brand new overcoats that some of them are lucky enough to have obtained. They have been fighting since the beginning of the War. They have left bits of their purple-blue tunics at Liège, Namur, Charleroi, Aerschot, Termonde, Antwerp. They have lost home, territory, family, friends. But they are fighting harder than ever. And so gloriously uplifted are they by the immortal honour they have wrested from destiny, that they can look at their ragged trousers with a grin, and love them, and their torn, burnt, blackened tunics, even as a conqueror loves the emblems of his glory that will never pale upon the pages of history.
A soldier loosens a bandage with his teeth, and breaks into a song.
It is so gay, so naive, so insouciant, so truly and deliciously Belge, that I catch it ere it fades,—that mocking song addressed to the Kaiser, asking, in horror, who are these ragged beings:
THE BELGIAN TO THE GERMAN.
Ils n'ont pas votre bel tunique,
Et ils n'ont pas votre bel air
Mais leur courage est magnifique.
Si ils n'ont pas votre bel tunique!
A votre morgue ils donnent la nicque.
Au milieu de leur plus gros revers,
Si ils n'ont pas votre bel tunique,
Et ils n'ont pas votre bel air!
"What those poor fellows want most," says the journalist as we flash onwards, "is boots! They want one hundred thousand boots, the Belgian Army. You can give a friend all sorts of things. But he hardly likes it if you venture to give him boots. And yet they want them, these poor, splendid Belgians. They want them, and they must have them. We must give them to them somehow. Lots of them have no boots at all!"
"I heard that the Belgians were getting boots from America," the author puts in suddenly.
The journalist turns his head with a jerk.
"What do you mean," he asks sharply. "Do you mean that they have ordered them from America, or that America's giving them."
"I believe what my informant, a sick officer in the Belgian Army, whom I visited this morning, told me was that the Americans were giving the boots."
"Are you sure it's giving?" the journalist persists. "We English ought to see to that. Last night I had an interview with the Belgian Minister of War and I tried to get on this subject of boots. But somehow I felt it was intrusive of me. I don't know. It's a delicate thing. It wants handling. Yet they must have the boots."