At a famous restaurant near the "Halles," which is the meeting-place of journalistic and literary folk in Brussels, I met an old friend, now editor of a large Brussels paper.
He thought it was his duty not to leave the town and to try to give the Belgian public as truthful news as possible about the war, but he admitted the task he had assumed was almost impossible.
All communications with foreign countries have been interrupted, and the papers must depend completely on the censor for news. The few items of correspondence which he could manage to get through from England and France were not allowed to be printed, and quotations from foreign papers are strictly forbidden.
The German Government tried often with his paper, and with all the others of a certain importance, to convert them into Germanophile papers, offering large sums of money and great advantages of every kind. Such offers were naturally refused, and now the Germans have founded a new paper, the title of which sounds very Belgian, while the editor and staff have been carefully selected amongst people who are, at least as far as their name goes, thoroughly Belgian.
This is now the leading organ of the Germanophil movement.
"Many Belgians in London?" asked my friend, after a pause.
"Too many," I could not help answering.
"Oh, we know, we know. Twenty per cent. are perhaps real refugees, and the others are slackers, or people who fancy that, after all, a season in London is the best way of dealing with the crisis.
"I wonder if the young men who left Belgium on the pretext of enlisting, and who are now 'acting the referee' in London, know that we consider them a disgrace to our country?
"If a man cannot fight with our King on the last bit of Belgian soil, his duty is to stick to his town, to his village, or to his country house. Especially if he is a man of wealth, and most Belgians now in London are fairly well off, there is plenty for him to do here."