between one friend and another. That consciousness of being watched, overheard, reported and denounced, poisoned the very atmosphere of their lives, and the sight of the field-grey men in the streets, the stench of them—the smell was horrible when German troops marched back from the battlefields—produced a soul-sickness worse than physical nausea. I could understand the constant fret at the nerves of these people, the nagging humiliation,—they had to doff hats to every German officer who swaggered by—and the slow-burning passion of people, proud by virtue of their race, who found themselves controlled, ordered about, bullied, punished for trivial infractions of military regulations, by German officials of hard, unbending arrogance. That must have been abominable for so long a time; but as yet I heard no charges of definite brutality, or of atrocious actions by individual enemies. The worst I had heard was that levy of the women for forced labour in unknown places. One could imagine the horror of it, the cruelty of it to girls whose nerves were already unstrung by secret fears, dark and horrible imaginings, the beast-like look in the eyes of men who passed them in the streets. Then the long-delayed hope of liberation—year after year—the German boasts of victory, the strength of the German defence that never seemed to weaken, in spite of the desperate attacks of French and British, the preliminary success of their great offensive in March and April when masses of English prisoners were herded through Lille, dejected, exhausted, hardly able to drag their feet along between their sullen guards—by Heaven, these people of Lille had needed much faith to save them from despair. No wonder now, that on the first day of liberation, some of them were wet-eyed with joy, and others were lightheaded with liberty.
In the Grande Place below the old balustraded Town
