FRANCS-TIREURS?
I THINK that there is no better occasion to deal with the question
whether there was a franc-tireur-guerilla in Belgium than after the
chapter on the destruction of Visé.
My opinion on the matter is still the same as when I first wrote
about it to _De Tijd_, and in _Vrij België_; and from my own personal
knowledge and after mixing with the people I consider the allegation
that the Belgians acted as francs-tireurs an absolute lie.
Some uphold the accusation on the ground of expressions in Belgian
newspapers, collected in a German pamphlet. In my opinion these
quotations have not the slightest value. Everyone will understand
this who thinks of the excitement of journalists, whose country was
suddenly and quite unexpectedly involved in a terrible war, and who
felt now that as journalists they had to perform a great, patriotic
duty. In their nervous, over-excited condition they sat at their desk
and listened to the gossip of refugees about civilians taking part
in the struggle. In their imagination they saw hordes of barbarians
overrun their native soil, saw man and man, woman and woman, shoulder
to shoulder, resisting the invader without regard for their own life.
The thoughts of such journalists, whose very own country had been at
war now for a few days, were not on severe logical lines; they found
a certain beauty in that picture, and I can quite understand how some
came to believe in it as a reality, and gloried in it.
That is not evidence however, for how did they get the information?
From my own experience I make bold to say with the greatest confidence
that these reports came from German sources only, whereas there was not
any ground for them.
I have witnessed all the people during the very earliest days of the
war. I came to Liège, passing between the forts, as described already.
I was in Lixhe when the pontoon bridge was wrecked repeatedly by Fort
Pontisse; I stayed at Visé three times before the destruction began,
and I was there when the charming townlet was wrecked by fire; and in
Louvain I have been dragged from my bed by six soldiers and arrested,
when the whole town was still ablaze.
Very well, I have:
1. Never seen anything of a franc-tireur-guerilla.
2. Never seen anyone who was arrested as a franc-tireur.
3. Never heard any German soldier, of whatever rank, assert that
he himself had witnessed any action by a franc-tireur, although I
questioned such soldiers times without number. They always mentioned
others, who had left days ago, and were said to have gone through the
miserable experience!
4. Never heard the _name_ of any franc-tireur in answer to my questions.
But they were _always_ German officers and no others who talked about
francs-tireurs, and at Visé, Liège, Dinant, Bilsen, and particularly
at Louvain, they constantly pressed me and tried to make me promise
that I should write to _De Tijd_ about francs-tireurs and justify the
devastations. These stories emanated from the officers and permeated
the rank and file; and the men grew fearfully angry with the Belgians,
whom they cursed and abused. It also made the soldiers terribly afraid
of francs-tireurs, and I noticed many a time that some loud sound from
a falling wall, for example, made a whole troop of soldiers jump up,
lay hold of their rifles, and hide themselves in an absolute "blue
funk." The mere noise made them curse and rage and talk of nothing but
burning houses.
In the end these stories of the soldiers convinced even the inhabitants
that there had been francs-tireurs, but never in the place where they
lived, always somewhere else. They could not believe that the Germans
could be so cruel and wreck so much property if nothing at all had
happened; and when at length the time came that they themselves were
obliged to fly, many of them believed that their compatriots who
_elsewhere_ acted as francs-tireurs were to blame for all the dire
calamities. But if they had had my opportunity to go "elsewhere"
and gather information there, they would have been convinced of the
untruth, and probably would have heard the name of their own village
as the scene of the occurrence. That was how rumours and reports got
about.
Many soldiers, probably most of them, were undoubtedly of good faith,
and _believed_ what they related; but the damnable notion had been put
into their heads by their superiors. That is why I do not consider it
impossible that _some_ places were wrecked on account of _alleged_ acts
by francs-tireurs.
I have explained already in the chapter "Round about Liège" that I
myself was duped occasionally, for example, by the story of the three
hundred civilians who had been shot. To my mind these violent acts
at the beginning of the war were part and parcel of the system of
frightfulness, by which the Germans tried to scare the population and
indirectly the hostile armies, at the same time rousing their own
soldiers to anger and fury.
That mad fury was also intensified considerably by the accusations
about gruesome mutilations committed on German soldiers by Belgians,
who were said to have cut off the noses, ears, genitals, and so on of
their enemies. These rumours were so persistent that in the end it was
generally believed in neutral countries that these things had happened
frequently.
No little astonishment was therefore created by an interview which I
published with Dr. van der Goot of The Hague, who did so much excellent
work in the Red Cross Hospital at Maastricht. He also had come to
believe all these stories, and as everybody always mentioned a large
hospital in Aix-la-Chapelle, which was said to be full of similarly
mutilated soldiers, Dr. van der Goot went to that town to see for
himself. The chief medical officer of that hospital in a conversation
stated that not one single case of that sort had been treated in his
institution nor in any of the other local hospitals where he was a
visiting physician. At a meeting of the medical circle just lately
held he had not heard one word, nor had any one colleague, about the
treatment of similar cases.
In Louvain I was myself arrested, because a more than half-drunk
soldier had accused me of spying and arson! There too I had to listen
to all sorts of abuse because I was a franc-tireur. And in spite of
all this they tried to extract a promise from me to write against the
francs-tireurs!
The history of the destruction of Visé affords also interesting support
to my opinion, as previously expressed, that the violent actions of the
Germans took place according to a fully thought-out design.
During the early days of the war the papers published a report, of
German origin, that Visé had been destroyed because francs-tireurs had
appeared. I was therefore not a little amazed when, arriving there on
August 8th, I found the townlet entirely undamaged, and even the German
military admitted that they had not heard a word about francs-tireurs.
But the inhabitants were treated even then in a most vexatious manner,
and on August 14th (the destruction came about on the 16th) I wrote to
_De Tijd_ (No. 20457):--
"Visé is under a real reign of terror. The day before yesterday the
town-crier walked the streets with his bell, and announced that
within twenty-four hours everyone had to deliver his bicycle at
the bridge. Anyone in whose house a bicycle should be found would
be shot and his house set on fire. Yesterday morning the Germans
announced once more that all arms, including those that were old or
damaged or taken to pieces, should be handed in at the town-hall
within an hour. If any arms should be found anywhere after that,
they would shoot the inhabitants and burn down the town. Eatables
and drinkables were requisitioned continuously under threats of
firing the town, and the inhabitants are afraid of nothing so much
as of the possibility that something may be required some day or
other that cannot be produced."
Even before that, on August 11th I sent a communication, by post or
cable (_De Tijd_, No. 20353), in which the following is found:--
"In and round about Visé people sleep in their cellars, as they are
threatened frequently that the town will be set on fire."
Anyone who, like myself, has been able to see in what frame of mind
the people were during the first days of the German occupation, cannot
believe it possible that they would even think of taking up arms. They
lived in an unending terror, tried to forestall the invader's demands,
and, if anything was requisitioned, they searched each other's houses
to see whether anything was kept back and all the demanded bottles of
gin or claret were forthcoming. There was not one who did not keep his
door open as widely as possible to prove his complete submissiveness,
and to let the Germans enter his house at any time to check what was
to be found there. Every moment I saw men or women run into the street
offering cigars to the soldiers from open boxes, smiling nervously
and desperately, trying to behave as unconcernedly as possible.
During those early days payment for refreshments was accepted hardly
anywhere, and people often refused to accept money from me, because
they mistook me for a German.
Men and young women in the prime of life sat whole days in a chair,
or lay abed, because in the most literal sense of the word they were
unable to stand on their feet for fear and terror, caused by the
incessant menaces.
And during these first days of the war I had not met a single person
who was able to settle down quietly in the existing circumstances, not
a single person in whom anger and fury subdued fear and terror.
Is it thinkable that persons in that frame of mind would take up arms
and invite the enemy's revenge upon themselves and those near and dear
to them, a revenge of which they were so mortally afraid?
And supposing for a moment that the allegations made by the Germans
were true, that there had been shooting at Visé for example, then one
might perhaps consider the revenge justifiable, but should also expect
that they would punish with a heavy heart, conscious that they were
inflicting a necessary evil.
Of a heavy heart, however, there was not a trace. In the previous
chapter I described how beastly they behaved during the destruction
of Visé; how the soldiers drank immoderate quantities of alcohol, and
then jeered at the wretched refugees; how they indulged in unmitigated
vandalism, and wrecked by hand things of which they knew that by and by
would be destroyed by fire.
Children and old people perished in consequence of the cruel
heartlessness of the Germans, and in St. Hadelin College they robbed
their own wounded of medical help and surgical appliances.
This happened not only at Visé, but also at other places which I
visited, more especially at Louvain. And those who read the following
chapters carefully will find sufficient support for my opinion, that
_Belgium is innocent of the base charges and allegations uttered
by Germany, which country soiled its conscience still worse, first
by plunging the little kingdom into the direst misery, and then by
accusing it falsely of crimes which it never committed_.