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young plants, and we hid the--you know, we hid everything.”
In other words, the Belgians dissembled. I don't remember whether it was he who said it to me, or Huysmans. He said, “This is the way the Belgians got on--and this is why the Dutch had such a terrible time. The Dutch did not know how to dissemble. The Germans would say, ‘Bring in all your cattle. Bring in the cattle and deliver them to us, such and such a day, such and such a time, at the market square. Bring all the cattle.' The edict would go forth. The Belgians would bring in ten cattle, twenty cattle--straight face, present them, polite, say nothing. They would go back and take care of the other twenty or other thirty-cattle they had back home. This is the way we dissembled.”
The orchid man said, “The Germans said, ‘Send a basket of orchids to Frau Somebody or other.' We gathered the finest orchids, but we put away the young plants that were just developing and would bear. We hid them.”
In other words, the Dutch, when they were told to bring in all their cattle, would say, “No, we will not. We will not give you our cattle. We will defend our cattle. Our cattle are our life and our food.”
Then they would line the Dutch up against the wall and shoot ‘em, and take their cattle.
But the Belgians--“We've been invaded many times.”
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