This is the final painting from a series of works from 1914 to 1917 about the suffering of the Belgian population during the first World War. The German invasion in Belgium greatly shocked the Dutch. Several artists such as Jan Toorop, Leo Gestel and Jan Sluyters were inspired by the sorrows and despair of the many Belgian refugees. Toorop himself had lived in Belgium for several years. The entire composition very much resembles the well known drawing La Belgique Sanglante in the Gemeente museum in The Hague. The central figure of a praying woman has the same features as Toorop's girl friend Miek Janssen. The old man fishing in a boat on the lake is surely St. Peter. In 1905 Toorop converted himself to Catholicism which from then on permuated his life and work. The other titles under which the present picture was known (Love in times of despair and Prayer in battle) raise this work to a higher, more abstract level of human drama.