This time
he had stepped forward, waving his glasses and his head and his hand,
bending forward and backward, his voice rising and rising. At the end of
his next paragraph he paused and, because the Russian was slow and
stammering once again, went forward on ids own account. Soon he forgot
himself, his audience, his translator, everything except his own dear
Belgium. His voice rose and rose; he pleaded with a marvellous rhythm of
eloquence her history, her fate, her shameful devastation. He appealed
on behalf of her murdered children, her ravished women, her slaughtered
men.
He appealed on behalf of her Arts, her Cathedrals, and libraries ruined,
her towns plundered. He told a story, very quietly, of an old
grandfather and grandmother murdered and their daughter ravished before
the eyes of her tiny children. Here he himself began to shed tears. He
tried to brush them back. He paused and wiped his eyes.... Finally,
breaking down altogether, he turned away and hid his face....
I do not suppose that there were more than a dozen persons in that hall
who understood anything of the language in which he spoke.
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