Where there are walls intact, and even over the ruins, the Germans have pasted their proclamations.
Veuve D. for insulting an official was sentenced to ten years in prison.
Jean D. for opposing an official, was shot.
And in flaunting placards the Germans beg the citizens of Louvain to understand that they will meet with nothing but kindness and consideration from Das Deutsche Heer, as long as they behave themselves.
I step into a little shop as a motor car full of German officers dashes by.
"How brave you are to keep on," I say to the little old woman behind the counter. "It must be terribly sad and difficult."
"If we had more salt," she says, "we shouldn't mind! But one must have salt. And there is none left in Louvain. We go to Brussels for it, but it grows more and more difficult to obtain, even there."
"And food?"
"Oh, the English will never let us starve," she says. "Mon Mari, he says so, and he knows. He was in England forty years ago. He was in the household of Baron D., the Belgian Ambassador in London. Would you like to see Mon Mari."
I went into the room behind the shop.