"
He broke into a torrent of rapid French. I felt quite sure that he was
saying that they would confiscate it; that they would annihilate it,
reduce it to its atomic constituents; take it, acres and buildings and
shade trees and vegetable garden, back to Germany. But as his French
was of the ninety horse-power variety and mine travels afoot, like
Bayard Taylor, and limps at that, I never caught up with him.
Later on, in a calmer moment, I had the thing explained to me.
It appears that the Germans have instituted a tax on all the Belgian
refugees of ten times the normal tax; the purpose being to bring back
into Belgium such refugees as wish to save the remnants of their
property. This will mean bringing back people of the better class who
have property to save. It will mean to the far-seeing German mind a
return of the better class of Belgians to reorganise things, to put
that prostrate country on its feet again, to get the poorer classes to
work, to make it self-supporting.
"The real purpose, of course," said my informant, "is so that American
sympathy, now so potent, will cease for both refugees and interned
Belgians. If the factories start, and there is work for them, and the
refugees still refuse to return, you can see what it means."
He may be right; I do not think so.
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