DEUTSCHLAND ÜBER ALLES
Oh! la foule joyeuse,
Le soir,
Autour des tables, sur les trottoirs,
Et la bière mousseuse
Débordant des verres,
Et les longues pipes de terre
Dont on suit des yeux la fumée,
Le coeur réjoui, l'âme apaisée!
Combien de temps, combien de temps,
O ma Patrie,
Tendras-tu patiemment
Dans la nuit
Tes mains meurtries?
EMILE CAMMAERTS.
Lettice and Dorothea arrived at the Bellevue in May. By the end of
July their guests were scattering like autumn leaves, and on the day
of the ultimatum Lettice took matters into her own hands, sent off the
servants and shut the hotel. She did not in the least want to follow
them--Lettice was not fond of running away; but for Dorothea's sake
she was making up her mind to that sacrifice, when she discovered that
Dorothea herself had other views. She go and hide? Rather not! She was
going to stay and see the fun. (At that time it was still possible for
the Dorotheas of this world to talk of seeing the fun.)
"I can nurse, you know," she said, sitting on the dresser in the big
deserted kitchen, her hands in her tweed pockets, her brown legs
swinging, her eyes sparkling with agreeable excitement. "I've got every
old certificate and medal the Red Cross people give. It was the one
thing I was let do as a kid--go to nursing lectures; uncle was always
fancying himself ill, you see, and I had to look after him. Oh yes, I
can nurse like billy-o! Go back to England and knit socks? Not for this
child!"
But, but--but it's not safe," objected Lettice, pensively rubbing her
nose.
"Safe? Nonsense! What do you suppose is going to happen to us? The
Germans will never get within miles of this, and even suppose they did
we're non-combatants--we should be all right. This isn't the Dark Ages.
Besides, if we run away, who's to look after the hotel?"
Lettice said nothing.
"Suppose they quartered soldiers here? It's just the place they might.
The poilu's a darling, and I love him madly, but what do you think
Mr. Gardiner's furniture would be like after a week of him? There
simply must be somebody to clear the rooms and see to things. You sent
over specially to be in charge, and then want to go and run away! I'm
surprised at you, Lettice. But whoever else shows pu-pusilianinimity"
(there were some words Dorothea really could not get!), "_I_ shall
always be found ready to die at my post."
"But--" said Lettice. Dorothea jumped down in a whirlwind and shook her
by the shoulders.
"Oh, pooh! I won't go home--I won't--I won't--so now! Do you understand
that? And you know perfectly well you don't want to either. As if I
couldn't see! You're saying this simply for my sake; and now you know
I'm not going in any case you may as well give in without any more
fuss. I'm tired of arguing with four buts and a grunt!"
"Well--" said Lettice, varying her formula with an eighth of an inch of
smile, and allowing herself to pretend to be over-persuaded.
So they stayed.
In common with many other people, Dorothea was not happy in her
predictions. On Friday, 21st August, a French army passed through
Bouillon. On Saturday a battle was fought near Maissin, in which twelve
thousand Germans were put out of action. On Sunday began the retreat
of the French towards Sedan. And on Monday, 24th August, the French
commander warned M. Hunin, burgomaster and proprietor of the Hôtel de
la Poste, that it would be prudent to evacuate the town. All the bells
in Bouillon rang the tocsin, and many people fled, abandoning their
houses as they stood. A few hours later the Germans entered the city.
The abandoned houses were at once broken open and systematically
plundered. Wine, beer, bedding were commandeered; pictures and
valuables of all sorts were packed up and sent to Germany. More careful
than their comrades at Louvain, the victors here secured and stole
the famous library of the Trappist monks of Cordemois. Next morning
a notice defining the duties of the inhabitants was posted up in the
market-place, on the walls of the hotel where the last French Emperor
had slept on the night before Sedan.
PROCLAMATION!
1. The town of Bouillon will pay a WAR LEVY of 500,000
francs.
2. Belgian or French soldiers must be handed over as PRISONERS
OF WAR before 4 P.M. Citizens failing to obey this
order will be sentenced to PENAL SERVITUDE FOR LIFE in
Germany. Every soldier found after that hour will be SHOT.
3. Arms, powder, dynamite must be handed over before 4
P.M. Penalty, to be SHOT.
4. INTERDICTION to be out in the streets DURING
THE HOURS OF DARKNESS. All houses must be completely
OPEN and LIGHTED. Groups of more than
FIVE persons are STRICTLY FORBIDDEN.
5. Citizens must salute every German officer with respect. Failing
this, the officer is entitled to extort it BY ANY MEANS IN HIS
POWER.
6. If any HOSTILE ACTION is attempted the town will be
BURNT DOWN and a THIRD OF THE MALE POPULATION WILL
BE SHOT; without distinction of persons, the innocent will
suffer with the guilty. The people of Bouillon must understand
that there is no crime greater or more terrible than to endanger
the existence of the town and its inhabitants by hostile action
against the German army.
The under-mentioned have been taken as HOSTAGES for the
good behavior of the town.
THE COMMANDER OF DIVISION.
Followed a list of forty names, including both the priests. Fined,
pillaged, terrorized, Bouillon yet thought itself lucky when the news
came in from the country.
From Rochehaut no one had escaped; the warning did not come in time.
Uhlans rode into the village on Monday afternoon and calmly took
possession. Rochehaut was cringingly terrified, slavishly obedient.
Not a dog could lift his tongue against the invaders without being
zealously throttled; and when Madame Mercier's fat sow got in the way
of the colonel, madame bundled out after her right under the horse's
hoofs, to save, not her pig, but the dignity of a German officer. Alas!
in spite of all, the colonel took a _billet de parterre_ on the nearest
dung-hill. He got up swearing, and for one awful moment Rochehaut
trembled; but he went into the Petit Caporal to change, and Rochehaut
breathed again, and went to pick up madame. That peril was averted.
For two days nothing happened, and the villagers crept out of their
shuttered houses, and began timidly to go about their work of getting
in the harvest. On the third morning, Thursday, 28th August, a poacher
in the woods near the river let off his gun at a rabbit. He did not
hit, and he was a Botassart man; but Rochehaut was the nearest village,
and Rochehaut was held responsible. Moreover, that morning a patrol
of Uhlans had gone out, to come back with ten empty saddles. French
cavalry had laid an ambush for them in the woods near Vresse. Somebody
must have given information to those French cavalry. It was necessary
to make an example.
As a preliminary, a cordon was drawn round the village, and the people
were collected in the square. Of the men, some thirty of the youngest
were marked off for deportation to Germany, where they might be made
use of for gathering in the harvest of the Fatherland; the remaining
twenty found an end to their troubles in a trench under the churchyard
wall. The women and children, who had been confined in the church
during the fusillade, were let out to dig the general grave, and then
suffered to go--not to their homes, however, for these were condemned.
"They wandered in deserts and in mountains, and in dens and caves of
the rocks, being destitute, afflicted, tormented." Poor old Madame
Mercier, whose leg had got broken in her struggles with the colonel's
horse, had been overlooked in the general confusion and left behind in
her cottage. She could not get downstairs, but she dragged herself to
the window and shrieked for help to the soldiers who were setting fire
to her kitchen. The colonel, riding down the street, was annoyed by
her cries; he looked up, and recognized the frightened old face. "One
of you stop that old woman's noise!" he shouted. After all, why not?
It was her own fault; why had she not obeyed orders, and gone to the
church with the rest? "Es ist unsere Pflicht," said the Uhlans.
It was Lettice's turn that afternoon to fetch the daily loaf from the
Boulangerie Lapouse, opposite the church. Her path led over the hill
past the crucifix, across the fields and through a corner of Gardiner's
enchanted wood, which here ran down quite close to the village. She
toiled along, as usual with her head in the clouds, but her dreams were
broken and her steps stayed by a sudden burst of firing. She paused in
the fringes of the wood.
All down the street men in gray were systematically spraying the houses
with petrol; others were taking their choice of the furniture. The
shops and cafés of the square were already in flames. The colonel sat
his horse looking on. Suddenly a boy of fifteen bolted like a rabbit
out of one of the blazing doorways and down the blazing street. He too
had disobeyed orders. A laugh, a leveled rifle, and the poor little
rabbit bounced into the air with a squeak like a mechanical doll, legs
and arms jerking, and then went flat on the ground, its defeatured face
in the midden. The flaxen poll became a crimson blob. Lettice saw
that. Her first impulse was to rush forward and attack the murderers
with her bare hands; the next sent her running blindly back through the
woods by the way she had come. She was not frightened--it was far too
vast a thing for personal fear; but she was sick with loathing, as at
the sight of some monstrosity which ought never to have been allowed to
see the sun.
The world never looked quite the same to Lettice after that day. Blind
and deaf, her mind blasted bare of thought, she crossed the fields and
scrambled down the orchard, and came round the corner of the house into
the courtyard. There she was brought up with a cold hand at her heart.
Several wagons were drawn up at the door; men in gray, that accursed
field-gray which has been hated as no uniform before, were loading them
under the direction of an officer. And Dorothea? Faint with foreboding,
seeing crimson blobs in patches on the flags, Lettice groped towards
the side door--and was met by Dorothea herself coming out, her face all
pink and white with tears.
"Oh, Lettice, Lettice!" she said, "they're going to burn the
house--they give us a quarter of an hour to turn out!"
Lettice put a hand on her arm, partly for support, partly to make sure
of her reality; and by common consent they turned, as they stood in
the doorway, to watch the lading of the carts. All went by clockwork.
To one, the soldiers were bringing out the contents of Lettice's linen
chest, her blankets, sheets, etc.; to another the furniture and plate.
They packed like professional movers. There were tarpaulins ready to
cover the carts when full.
"There's my chest of drawers," said Dorothea under her breath. "Oh,
Lettice, oh, Lettice! what _is_ that man doing with my best crêpe de
Chine nighties? Oh, look, he's packing them all up--he _can't_ be
going to wear them himself, he must be taking them for his best girl
in Germany, and they're every single one embroidered with my name in
full--oh, good gracious, how can he?" She broke into a hysterical
giggle. "Oh, really, I do think Germans have funny sort of minds! Oh,
look, look, there's your bureau out of the den--"
Lettice's bureau--it was Gardiner's bureau, the one he always used, the
very one he had bought from Madame Hasquin in Lettice's presence; he
loved it too much to let it out of his own room. The officer, staying
his men with a word, began to look through the drawers, presumably
for valuables. The file of Lettice's household bills he tossed aside;
letters and other papers he skimmed, before rejecting them.
Lettice's hand fell from Dorothea's arm. She walked straight across the
courtyard to his side. "What are you doing with that bureau?" she asked.
"Requisitioned for the army," was the curt reply.
"You mean, you want it yourself," said Lettice. "It's stealing; and you
and your men are just thieves and murderers."
He turned, then, and looked at her, while Dorothea plucked at her
sleeve, whispering frantic entreaties. But only a firing party could
have silenced Lettice at that moment.
"No, madam, it is not stealing, it is war," said the German in an
altered voice. "You are conquered; you have no longer any property
or any rights but what we choose to allow you. You would do well to
remember that. And let me advise you in future to be more careful of
what you say. Not all my compatriots have an English education to look
back upon."
Then Dorothea pulled her away, still reluctant; and it was Dorothea,
in the nightmare minutes that followed, who sorted and packed in wild
haste all she thought they could carry. There was not much left to
take. She stuffed some clothes into a couple of pillow-cases, and
dragged the silent Lettice out at the back, past some soldiers who with
the same deadly method were smashing the windows in turn and spraying
the interior. These men wore broad belts to which were attached a
hatchet, a syringe, a small shovel, and a revolver. On the belts were
the words, "Company of Incendiaries," also, "God with us." As Dorothea
had said, Germans have funny sort of minds.
Crouching at the top of the orchard behind the house, the two girls
watched the last of the Bellevue. First the petrol caught, an
amethystine aura flickering insubstantial. Then the woodwork kindled,
and yellow flames began to twine among that ghostly harebell blue.
Orange pennons slid softly through the empty window frames; tiny golden
curls started out along the eaves, small and even as a row of gas jets.
The flames lengthened, they united, they rippled and flapped up the sky
like a banner. They grew many-tinted, according to their fuel--gold,
silver, ruby, emerald, amethyst, topaz, metallic blue. Lastly the roof
fell in, and a great foursquare of fire puffed up to heaven, with
streams of starry sparks, and clouds of glare, and floating flakes of
gold. Dorothea was crying; but Lettice, her lips set grimly, watched to
the end the destruction of Gardiner's hotel, the home he loved, which
he had confided to her care.
Night came, but not darkness. Rochehaut was burning, Poupehan in the
valley flared with half-a-dozen haystacks and a house or two, Corbion
church was a beacon of tall flames on the hill, Alle's martyrdom showed
as a pulsing glow of dusky rose in the overhanging cloud. On the far
side of the valley, marching home with their booty down the road from
Corbion to Bouillon, the soldiers of the Fatherland were singing,
_Deutschland über Alles_.