Flanders, they halted the advance of the enemy upon Calais.
France and England know it; and Belgium stands before them both,
and before the entire world, as a nation of heroes. Never before
in my whole life did I feel so proud to be a Belgian as when, on
the platforms of French stations, and halting a while in Paris,
and visiting London, I was witness of the enthusiastic
admiration our allies feel for the heroism of our army. Our King
is, in the esteem of all, at the very summit of the moral scale;
he is doubtless the only man who does not recognize that fact,
as, simple as the simplest of his soldiers, he stands in the
trenches and puts new courage, by the calmness of his face, into
the hearts of those of whom he requires that they shall not
doubt of their country. The foremost duty of every Belgian
citizen at this hour is gratitude to the army.
If any man had rescued you from shipwreck or from a fire, you
would hold yourselves bound to him by a debt of everlasting
thankfulness. But it is not one man, it is two hundred and fifty
thousand men who fought, who suffered, who fell for you so that
you might be free, so that Belgium might keep her independence,
so that after battle, she might rise nobler, purer, more erect,
and more glorious than before.
Pray daily, my Brethren, for these two hundred and fifty
thousand, and for their leaders to victory; pray for our
brothers in arms; pray for the fallen; pray for those who are
still engaged; pray for the recruits who are making ready for
the fight to come.
Better than any other man, perhaps, do I know what our unhappy
country has undergone. Nor will any Belgian, I trust, doubt of
what I suffer in my soul, as a citizen and as a Bishop, in
sympathy with all this sorrow. These last four months have
seemed to me age-long. By thousands have our brave ones been
mown down; wives, mothers are weeping for those they shall not
see again; hearths are desolate; dire poverty spreads, anguish
increases. At Malines, at Antwerp, the people of two great
cities have been given over, the one for six hours, the other
for thirty-four hours of a continuous bombardment, to the throes
of death. I have passed through the greater part of the most
terribly devastated districts and the ruins I beheld, and the
ashes, were more dreadful than I, prepared by the saddest of
forebodings, could have imagined. Other parts which I have not
yet had time to visit have in like manner been laid waste.
Churches, schools, asylums, hospitals, convents in great
numbers, are in ruins. Entire villages have all but disappeared.
At Werchter-Wackerzeel, for instance, out of three hundred and
eighty homes, a hundred and thirty remain; at Tremeloo two
thirds of the village are overthrown; at Bueken out of a hundred
houses, twenty are standing; at Schaffen one hundred and
eighty-nine houses out of two hundred are destroyed--eleven
still stand. At Louvain the third part of the buildings are
down; one thousand and seventy-four dwellings have disappeared;
on the town land and in the suburbs, one thousand eight hundred
and twenty-three houses have been burnt.
In this dear city of Louvain, perpetually in my thoughts, the
magnificent church of St. Peter will never recover its former
splendor. The ancient college of St. Ives, the art-schools, the
consular and commercial schools of the University, the old
markets, our rich library with its collections, its unique and
unpublished manuscripts, its archives, its gallery of great
portraits of illustrious rectors, chancellors, professors,
dating from the time of its foundation, which preserved for
masters and students alike a noble tradition and were an
incitement in their studies--all this accumulation of
intellectual, of historic, and of artistic riches, the fruit of
the labors of five centuries--all is reduced to dust.
Thousands of Belgian citizens have in like manner been deported
to the prisons of Germany, to Münsterlagen, to Celle, to
Magdeburg. At Münsterlagen alone three thousand one hundred
civil prisoners were numbered. History will tell of the physical
and moral torments of their long martyrdom. Hundreds of innocent
men were shot. I possess no complete list, but I know that there
were ninety-one shot at Aerschot, and that there, under pain of
death, their fellow citizens were compelled to dig their graves.
In the Louvain group of communes one hundred and seventy-six
persons, men and women, old men and babies, rich and poor, in
health and sickness, were shot or burnt.
In my diocese alone I know that thirteen priests were put to
death. One of these, the parish priest of Gelrode, suffered, I
believe, a veritable martyrdom.
We can neither number our dead nor compute the measure of our
ruins. And what would it be if we turned our sad steps towards
Liége, Namur, Andenne, Dinant, Tamines, Charleroi, and
elsewhere?
And where lives were not taken, and where buildings were not
thrown down, what anguish unrevealed! Families, hitherto living
at ease, now in bitter want; all commerce at an end, all careers
ruined; industry at a standstill; thousands upon thousands of
workingmen without employment; working-women, shop-girls, humble
servant-girls without the means of earning their bread; and poor
souls forlorn on the bed of sickness and fever, crying, "O Lord,
how long, how long?"
How long, O Lord, they wondered, how long wilt Thou suffer the
pride of this iniquity? Or wilt Thou finally justify the impious
opinion that Thou carest no more for the work of Thy hands? A
shock from a thunderbolt, and behold all human foresight is set
at naught. Europe trembles upon the brink of destruction.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
Many are the thoughts that throng the breast of man to-day, and
the chief of them all is this: God reveals Himself as the
Master. The nations that made the attack, and the nations that
are warring in self-defense, alike confess themselves to be in
the hand of Him without whom nothing is made, nothing is done.
Men long unaccustomed to prayer are turning again to God. Within
the army, within the civil world, in public, and within the
individual conscience, there is prayer. Nor is that prayer
to-day a word learnt by rote, uttered lightly by the lip; it
surges from the troubled heart, it takes the form, at the feet
of God, of the very sacrifice of life.
God will save Belgium, my Brethren, you cannot doubt it.
Nay, rather, He is saving her.
Across the smoke of conflagration, across the stream of blood,
have you not glimpses, do you not perceive signs, of His love
for us? Is there a patriot among us who does not know that
Belgium has grown great? Nay, which of us would have the heart
to cancel this last page of our national history? Which of us
does not exult in the brightness of the glory of this shattered
nation? Let us acknowledge that we needed a lesson in
patriotism. There were Belgians, and many such, who wasted their
time and their talents in futile quarrels of class with class,
of race with race, of passion with personal passion.
Yet when, on the second of August, a mighty foreign power,
confident in its own strength and defiant of the faith of
treaties, dared to threaten us in our independence, then did all
Belgians, without difference of party, or of condition, or of
origin, rise up as one man, [close-ranged] about their own king
and their own government, and cry to the invader: "Thou shalt
not pass!"
At once, instantly, we were conscious of our own patriotism. For
down within us all is something deeper than personal interests,
than personal kinships, than party feeling, and this is the need
and the will to devote ourselves to that more general interest
which Rome called the public thing, _Res publica_. And this
profound will within us is Patriotism.
Our country is not a mere gathering of persons or of families
dwelling on the same soil, having amongst themselves relations,
more or less intimate, of business, of neighborhood, of a
community of memories, happy or unhappy. Not so; it is an
association of living souls to be defended and safeguarded at
all costs, even the cost of blood, under the leadership of those
presiding over its fortunes. And it is because of this general
spirit that the people of a country live a common life in the
present, through the past, through the aspirations, the hopes,
the confidence in a life to come, which they share together.
Patriotism, an internal principle of order and of unity, an
organic bond of the members of a nation, was placed by the
finest thinkers of Greece and Rome at the head of the natural
virtues.
ENDURANCE
We may now say, my Brethren, without unworthy pride, that our
little Belgium has taken a foremost place in the esteem of
nations. I am aware that certain onlookers, notably in Italy and
in Holland, have asked how it could be necessary to expose this
country to so immense a loss of wealth and of life, and whether
a verbal manifesto against hostile aggression, or a single
cannon-shot on the frontier, would not have served the purpose
of protest. But assuredly all men of good feeling will be with
us in our rejection of these paltry counsels.
On the 19th of April, 1839, a treaty was signed in London, by
King Leopold, in the name of Belgium on the one part, and by the
Emperor of Austria, the King of France, the Queen of England,
the King of Prussia, and the Emperor of Russia on the other; and
its seventh article decreed that Belgium should form a separate
and perpetually neutral State, and should be held to the
observance of this neutrality in regard to all other States. The
signers promised, for themselves and their successors, upon
their oaths, to fulfill and to observe that treaty in every
point and every article. Belgium was thus bound in honor to
defend her own independence. She kept her oath. The other Powers
were bound to respect and to protect her neutrality. Germany
violated her oath; England kept hers.
These are the facts.
The laws of conscience are sovereign laws. We should have acted
unworthily had we evaded our obligation by a mere feint of
resistance. And now we would not change our first resolution; we
exult in it. Being called upon to write a most solemn page in
the history of our country, we resolved that it should be also a
sincere, also a glorious page. And as long as we are required to
give proof of endurance, so long we shall endure.
All classes of our citizens have devoted their sons to the
cause of their country; but the poorer part of the population
have set the noblest example, for they have suffered also
privation, cold, and famine. If I may judge of the general
feeling from what I have witnessed in the humbler quarters of
Malines, and in the most cruelly afflicted districts of my
diocese, the people are energetic in their endurance. They look
to be righted; they will not hear of surrender.
The sole lawful authority in Belgium is that of our King, of the
elected representatives of the nation. This authority alone has
a right to our affection, our submission.
Occupied provinces are not conquered provinces. Belgium is no
more a German province than Galicia is a Russian province.
Nevertheless the occupied portion of our country is in a
position it is compelled to endure. The greater part of our
towns, having surrendered to the enemy on conditions, are bound
to observe those conditions. From the outset of military
operations, the civil authorities of the country urged upon all
private persons the necessity of avoiding hostile acts against
the enemy's army. That instruction remains in force. It is our
army, and our army solely, in league with the brave troops of
our Allies, that has the honor and the duty of national defense.
Let us intrust the army with our final deliverance.
Towards the persons of those who are holding dominion among us
by military force, and who cannot but know of the energy with
which we have defended, and are still defending, our
independence, let us conduct ourselves with all needful
forbearance. Let us observe the rules they have laid upon us so
long as those rules do not violate our personal liberty, nor our
consciences, nor our duty to our country. Let us not take
bravado for courage, nor tumult for bravery.
Our distress has moved the other nations. England, Ireland, and
Scotland; France, Holland, the United States, Canada, have vied
with each other in generosity for our relief. It is a spectacle
at once most mournful and most noble. Here again is a revelation
of the Providential Wisdom which draws good from evil. In your
name, my Brethren, and in my own, I offer to the governments and
the nations that have succored us the assurance of our
admiration and our gratitude.
OZYMANDIAS
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert.... Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
AND THE COCK CREW[1]
"I hate them all!" said old Gaspard,
And in his weather-beaten face
The lines of bitterness grew hard,
For he had seen his dwelling-place
Laid waste in very wantonness,
And all his little treasures flung
Into that never-sated press
From which no wine, but gall, had sprung--
And not his heart alone was sore,
For in his frail old limbs he bore
Wounds of the heavy, ruthless hand
That weighed so cruelly of late
Upon the people and the land.
It was not hard to understand
Why old Gaspard should hate
Even the German lad who lay
His neighbor in the hospital,
The boy who pleaded night and day:
"Don't let me die! don't let me die!
When I see the dawn, I know
I shall live out that day, and then
I'm not afraid--till dark--but oh,
How soon the night comes round again!
Don't let me die! don't let me die!"
The old man muttered at each low,
Pitiful, half delirious cry,
"They should die, had I the say,
In hell's own torment, one and all!"
And then would drag himself away,
Despite each motion's agony,
To where the wounded poilus lay,
And cheer them with his mimicry
Of barnyard noises, and his gay
Old songs of what life used to be.
One night the lad suddenly cried,
"Mother!" And though the sister knew--
He was so young, so terrified,
"You're safe--the east is light," she lied.
But "No!" he sobbed, "the cock must crow
Before the dawn!" They did not hear
A cripple crawl across the floor,
But all at once, outside the door,
In the courtyard, shrill and clear,
Once, twice and thrice, chanticleer crew.
The blue eyes closed and the boy sighed,
"I'm not afraid, now day's begun.
I'll live--till--" With a smile, he died.
And in that hour when he denied
The god of hate, I think that One
Passed through the hospital's dim yard
And turning, looked on old Gaspard.
AMELIA JOSEPHINE BURR.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] COPYRIGHT BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
A BELGIAN LAWYER'S APPEAL
One of the great lawyers of Belgium in behalf of the members of the bar
of Brussels, Liége, Ghent, Charleroi, Mons, Louvain, and Antwerp,
appeared twice before the German Court of Justice at Brussels and
appealed for more just treatment of the Belgian people. In his first
appeal, he protested against the illegal manner in which the Belgians
were accused of crime, tried, and convicted at the pleasure of German
officials. He concluded with the following eloquent words:
I can understand martial law for armies in the field. It is the
immediate reply to an aggression against the troops, the quick
justice of the commander of the army responsible for his
soldiers. But our armies are far away; we are no longer in the
zone of military operations. Nothing here threatens your troops,
the inhabitants are calm.
The people have taken up work again. You have bidden them do it.
Each one attends to his business--magistrates, judges, officials
of the provinces and cities, the clergy, all are at their posts,
united in one outburst of national interest and brotherhood.
However, this does not mean that they have forgotten. The
Belgian people lived happily in their corner of the earth,
confident in their dream of independence. They saw this dream
dispelled; they saw their country ruined and devastated; its
ancient hospitable soil has been sown with thousands of tombs
where our own sleep; the war has made tears flow which no hand
can dry. No, the murdered soul of Belgium will never forget.
His second appeal will be spoken by school children in Belgium, and
perhaps in America, when the names of the German judges to whom he
spoke are forgotten even in Germany.
We are not annexed. We are not conquered. We are not even
vanquished. Our army is fighting. Our colors float alongside
those of France, England, and Russia. The country subsists. She
is simply unfortunate. More than ever, then, we now owe
ourselves to her, body and soul. To defend her rights is also to
fight for her.
We are living hours now as tragic as any country has ever known.
All is destruction and ruin around us. Everywhere we see
mourning. Our army has lost half of its effective forces. Its
percentage in dead and wounded will never be reached by any of
the belligerents. There remains to us only a corner of ground
over there by the sea. The waters of the Yser flow through an
immense plain peopled by the dead. It is called the Belgian
Cemetery. There sleep our children by the thousands. There they
are sleeping their last sleep. The struggle goes on bitterly and
without mercy.
Your sons, Mr. President, are at the front; mine as well. For
months we have been living in anxiety regarding the morrow.
Why these sacrifices, why this sorrow? Belgium could have
avoided these disasters, saved her existence, her treasures, and
the lives of her children, but she preferred her honor.
EDITH CAVELL
Americans are particularly interested in the story of Edith Cavell,
because the American minister in Brussels on behalf of the American
people asked German officials to spare her life, or at least to
postpone her execution, until he might have an opportunity to see that
she was properly defended. Germany's disregard of America and the
wishes of the American people was clearly shown by the scornful manner
in which Germany set aside as of no importance American protests and
requests. Her action in this case was similar to her action earlier in
regard to the _Lusitania_, involving in both cases direct falsehoods by
representatives of the German government.
Germans wondered that the shooting of an English woman for treason
should cause a sensation, just as they wondered why even their enemies
did not applaud them for murdering more than a thousand non-combatants
on the _Lusitania_. They did not realize that both of these crimes
would add thousands of volunteers to the armies fighting against them,
and that they would always be recorded in history as among the most
despicable deeds of a civilized nation. Some one has said, "Attila and
his Huns were ignorant barbarians, but the modern Huns know better and
therefore they are more to be condemned."
Edith Cavell was so brave, so frank, so honest that it would seem that
even to the Germans her virtues would
plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of her taking-off.
But not so, for German education and training have evidently made the
German people look upon almost everything in a way different from that
of Americans, Englishmen, and Frenchmen. And yet the common German
people do at times show that they have a feeling of admiration, if not
of affection, for peoples of other nations; for we are told of a German
city erecting a statue to the French and English soldiers who died as
captives in the German prison located there, with the inscription, _To
our Comrades, who here died for their Fatherland_.
But we must remember that there are many kingdoms in Germany and cruel
Prussia rules them all. It was Prussian savagery and barbarity that
approved the massacre by the Turks of almost an entire people, the
Armenians, and it was done under the eyes of German officers. The same
is true of the wholesale slaughter of non-combatant Serbian men, women,
and children by the Bulgarians. A word from Germany would have stopped
it all.
When the war broke out, Edith Cavell was living in England with her
aged mother. She felt her duty was in Belgium and she went to Brussels
and established a private hospital. An American woman, Mary Boyle
O'Reilly of Boston, a daughter of the poet, John Boyle O'Reilly, worked
with her for a time. When Miss O'Reilly was expelled from Belgium, she
begged Miss Cavell to leave that land of horror, but Miss Cavell only
said, "My duty is here."
She and her nurses cared for many a wounded German soldier and this
alone should have insured her fair treatment, if not gratitude, from
Germany.
She was arrested, kept in solitary confinement for ten weeks without
any charge being made against her; then was tried secretly for having
sheltered French and Belgian soldiers who were seeking to escape to
Holland.
It is probably true that Miss Cavell did this, but the history of war
in modern times records no case where any one has been put to death for
giving shelter for a short time to a fugitive soldier. Such an act does
not, according to the custom of civilized countries, make one a spy,
nor is it treason.
Those who have investigated the case carefully have come to the
conclusion that the Germans decided to make a terrible example of some
of the women in Brussels who were sympathizing with and perhaps helping
French and Belgian soldiers to escape to Holland, for about the same
time twenty-two other women were arrested on the same charge as that
finally made against Edith Cavell.
When Brand Whitlock, the American minister, learned from an outsider
(he could get no information from the German officials) that Edith
Cavell had been condemned, he sent the following letters, one a
personal one, the other an official one, to the German commandant:
Personal:
MY DEAR BARON:
I am too ill to put my request before you in person, but once
more I appeal to the generosity of your heart. Stand by and save
from death this unfortunate woman. Have pity on her.
Your devoted friend,
BRAND WHITLOCK.
Official:
I have just heard that Miss Cavell, a British subject, and
consequently under the protection of my Legation, was this
morning condemned to death by court-martial.
If my information is correct, the sentence in the present case
is more severe than all the others that have been passed in
similar cases which have been tried by the same Court, and,
without going into the reasons for such a drastic sentence, I
feel that I have the right to appeal to your Excellency's
feelings of humanity and generosity in Miss Cavell's favor, and
to ask that the death penalty passed on Miss Cavell may be
commuted and that this unfortunate woman shall not be executed.
Miss Cavell is the head of the Brussels Surgical Institute. She
has spent her life in alleviating the sufferings of others, and
her school has turned out many nurses who have watched at the
bedside of the sick all the world over, in Germany as in
Belgium. At the beginning of the war Miss Cavell bestowed her
care as freely on the German soldiers as on others. Even in
default of all other reasons, her career as a servant of
humanity is such as to inspire the greatest sympathy and to call
for pardon. If the information in my possession is correct, Miss
Cavell, far from shielding herself, has, with commendable
straightforwardness, admitted the truth of all the charges
against her, and it is the very information which she herself
has furnished, which has aggravated the severity of the sentence
passed on her.
It is then with confidence, and in the hope of its favorable
reception, that I have the honor to present to your Excellency
my request for pardon on Miss Cavell's behalf.
BRAND WHITLOCK.
But no real attention was paid to the American notes. Edith Cavell was
sentenced at five o'clock on the afternoon of October 11, and was put
to death that same night.
Permission was refused to take her body for burial outside the prison.
It is doubtless still buried in the prison yard unless the Germans have
removed it for fear a monument may be erected above it. The English are
to erect a monument in her honor in London. Dr. James M. Beck, in
writing about her case, says of her burial in the prison yard, "One can
say of that burial place, as Byron said of the prison cell of Chillon:
'Let none these marks efface, for they appeal from tyranny to God.'"
SON[2]