THE WERWOLF AT LARGE
I
In the days immediately before and after the breaking of the
war-tempest, the servants of the United States Government in Europe were
suddenly overwhelmed by a flood of work and care. The strenuous,
incessant toil in the consulates, legations, and embassies acted
somewhat as a narcotic. There was so much to do that there was no time
to worry.
The sense of an unmeasured calamity was present in the background of our
thoughts from the very beginning. But it was not until later that the
nature of the disaster grew clear and poignant. As month after month
hammered swiftly by, the meaning and portent of the catastrophe emerged
more sharply and penetrated our minds more deeply, stinging us awake.
A mighty nation which "rejected the dream of universal peace throughout
the world as non-German" (the Crown Prince, Germany in Arms); a nation
trained for war as a "biological necessity in which Might proves itself
the supreme Right" (Bernhardi, Germany and the Next War); a nation which
had been taught that "frightfulness" is a lawful and essential weapon in
war (Von Clausewitz); and whose generals said, "Frankly, we are and must
be barbarians" (Von Diefurth, Hamburger Nachrichten), while their
philosophers declared that "The German is the superior type of the
species homo sapiens" (Woltmann); a nation whose Imperial Head commended
to his soldiers the example of the Huns, and proclaimed, "It is to the
empire of the world that the German genius aspires" (Kaiser Wilhelm,
Speech at Aix-la-Chapelle, June 20, 1902)--a nation thus armed,
instructed, disciplined, and demoralized had broken loose. Another
Attila had come, with a new horde behind him to devastate and change the
face of the world. In the tumult and darkness which enfolded Europe, the
Werwolf was at large. We could hear his ululations in the forest. The
cries of his victims grew louder, piercing our hearts with pity and just
wrath.
II
But even when the most dreadful things are happening around you, the
regular and necessary work of the world must be carried on. Your own
particular "chore" must be done as well as you can do it.
As the trouble drew near and suddenly fell upon the world, the burden of
enormously increased and varied duties pressed heavily upon the American
representatives abroad. The first thing that we had to do was to make
provision for taking care of our own people in Europe who were caught
out in the storm and the danger.
That was a practical job with unlimited requirements. No one, except
those who had the distracting privilege of being in the American
diplomatic and consular service in the summer of 1914, knows how much
work and how many kinds of work rushed down upon us in a moment.
Banking, postal, and telegraph service, transportation, hotel and
boarding-house business, baggage express, the recovery of missing
articles and persons, the reunion of curiously separated families,
confidential inquiries, medical service (mainly mind-healing), and free
consultation on every subject under the sun--all these different
occupations, trades, and professions were not set down in our programme
when we came to Europe, nor covered by the slim calf-bound volume of
Instructions to Diplomatic Officers which was our only guide-book. But
we had to learn them at short notice and practise them as best we could.
No doubt we often acted in a way that was not strictly protocolaire.
Certainly we made mistakes. But it was better to do that than to sit
like bumps on a log doing nothing. The immediate affair in hand was to
help our own folks who were in distress and difficulty and who wanted to
get home as quickly and as safely as possible. So we tried to do it,
making use of the best means available, and praying that heaven and our
diplomatic colleagues would forgive any errors or gaffes that we might
make. We preserved a profound respect for etiquette and regularity. But
our predominant anxiety was to get the things done that had to be done.
Take an illustration. Excuse the personal references in it.
From the very beginning it seemed clear to me that one of the greatest
difficulties in the first days of war would be to secure a supply of
ready money for American travellers in flight. As a rule they carried
little hard cash with them. Paper money would be at a discount; checks
and drafts difficult, if not impossible, to negotiate in Holland.
Moratoriums were falling everywhere as thick as leaves in Vallombrosa.
So I went directly to my friend Foreign Minister Loudon, and asked him a
plain question.
"Would your Government be willing to help us in getting American
travellers' checks and drafts on letters of credit cashed if I should
indorse them as American Minister?"
He answered as promptly as if the suggestion had already been formed in
his own mind--as perhaps it had.
"Certainly, and gladly! Those pieces of paper would be the best
securities in the world--short-term notes of the American Government. If
you will get the authority from Washington to indorse, the Bank of the
Netherlands will honor the checks and drafts; and if the Bank hesitates
the National Treasury will cash them."
I cabled to the Department of State asking permission to make the
indorsements (a thing hitherto expressly forbidden by the instructions
to diplomatic officers), and explaining that I would take in each case
the best security obtainable, whether in the form of a draft on a letter
of credit or a personal note of hand with satisfactory references, and
that no money should be drawn except for necessary living expenses and
the cost of the journey home. The answer came promptly: "You have the
authority to indorse."
So a system of international banking between two Governments was
introduced. I believe it was absolutely a new plan. But it worked.
Then another idea occurred to me. The letters of credit were usually
drawn on London or Paris. In both cities a moratorium was on. Why not
make the drafts directly on New York? Why not call on the signer of the
letter of credit for the money instead of calling on the addressee? This
would cut out any possibility of difficulty from the moratorium.
This also was a new method. But it seemed reasonable. We tried it. And
it worked. A visiting committee of New York bankers to whom I related
this experience later laughed immensely. They also made some remarks
about "amateurs" and "audacity" which I would rather not repeat. But
upon the whole they did not seem shocked beyond recovery.
So it happened, by good fortune, that there was never a day in The Hague
when an American fugitive from the war, homeward bound, could not obtain
what cash he needed for him to live and to get to the United States. But
not money to buy souvenir spoons, or old furniture and pictures. "Very
sorry," we explained, "but our Government is not dealing in antiquities
at present. It is simply helping you to get home as quickly and
comfortably as possible. Please tell us how much money you need for
board and passage-money and you shall have it."
Except three or four chronic growlers and a few passionate antiquarian
ladies, everybody took it good-humoredly and cheerfully. I think they
understood, though not always clearly, that our Government was doing
more for its citizens caught out in a tempest than any other government
in the world would have done.
When the Tennessee arrived in the latter part of August with $2,500,000
in gold for the same purpose, it was another illustration of our
Government's parental care and forethought. We received our share of
this gold at The Hague. The first use we made of part of it was to take
up the American checks and drafts on which the Bank of the Netherlands
had advanced the money. Then we sent the paper to America for collection
and repayment to the National Treasury. I have not the accounts here and
cannot speak by the book, but I think I am not far out in saying that
our loss on these transactions was less than five per cent of the total
amount handled. And we banked for some very poor people, too!
I never had any idea, before the war broke out, how many of our
countrymen and countrywomen there are roaming about Europe every summer,
and with what a cheerful trust in Providence and utter disregard of
needful papers and precautions some of them roam! There were young women
travelling alone or in groups of two or three. There were old men so
feeble that one's first thought on seeing them was: "How did you get
away from your nurse?" There were people with superfluous funds, and
people with barely enough funds, and people with no funds at all. There
were college boys who had worked their way over and couldn't find a
chance to work it back. There were art-students and music-students
whose resources had given out.
There was a very rich woman, plastered with diamonds, who demanded the
free use of my garage for the storage of her automobile. When I
explained that, to my profound regret, it was impossible, because three
American guest cars were already stored there and the place could hold
no more, she flounced out of the room in high dudgeon.
There was a lady of a different type who came to say, very modestly,
that she had a balance in a bank at The Hague which she wanted to leave
to my order for use in helping people who were poor and deserving.
"Please make as sure as you can of the poverty," said she, "but take a
chance, now and then, on the deserts. We can't confine our kindness to
saints." This gift amounted to two or three thousand dollars, and was
the foundation of the Minister's private benevolence fund, which proved
so useful in later days and of which a remnant has been left for my
successor.
An American wrote to us from a little village in a remote province of
the Netherlands saying that his remittances from home had not arrived
and that he was penniless. He added by way of personal description: "My
social position is that of a Catholic priest with nervous prostration."
We helped him and he proved to be all right.
A rising comic-opera star, of engaging appearance and manners
(American), who was under a temporary financial obscuration because her
company in Holland had broken up, came to ask us to assist her in
getting to Germany, where she had friends and hoped to find work. We did
it with alacrity. Then she wrote asking us to forward certain legal
papers in connection with a divorce which she contemplated. We did it.
Then she sent us some of her newspaper articles and a lot of clippings
from German journals, requesting us to transmit them in the Legation
pouch to America. This we politely declined, with the plea of "non
possumus". Whereupon she was furious and denounced us to the German
authorities and the German-American press.
An American lady whose husband was dying in Hamburg came in desperate
distress with her daughter, to beg us to aid them in getting to him. We
found the only way that was open, a little-known route through the
northeast corner of Holland, procured the necessary permits, and enabled
the wife and daughter to reach his bedside before he died.
A poor woman (with a nice little baby), husband, a naturalized American,
was "somewhere in Argentina," wanted to go to his family in one of the
northwestern States. She had no money. We paid her expenses in The Hague
until we could get into communication with the family, and then sent her
home rejoicing.
These are a few examples of the ever-recurring humor and pathos which
touched our incessant grind of peace work in war times at The Hague.
Thousands and thousands of Americans, real or presumptive, passed
through the Legation--all sorts and conditions of men, asking for all
kinds of things.
Our house was transformed into an Inquiry Office and a Bureau for First
Aid to the Injured. There was often a dense throng outside the front
door, filling the street and reaching over into the park. Two Dutch boy
scouts, capital fellows in khaki, volunteered their assistance in
keeping order, and stood guard at the entrance giving out numbered
tickets of admission so that the house would not be choked and all the
work stopped.
You see, Holland was the narrow neck of the bottle, and the incredible
multitudes of Americans who were scattered about in Germany, Austria,
Russia, and parts of Switzerland, came pouring out our way. There was no
end to the extra work. Many a night I did not get my clothes off, but
took a bath and breakfast in the morning and went ahead with the next
day's business. No eight-hour day in that establishment!
It would have been impossible to hold on and keep going but for the
devotion and industry of the entire Legation staff, and the splendid aid
of the volunteers who came to help us through. Professor George Grafton
Wilson, of Harvard, was our Counsellor in International Law. Professor
Philip M. Brown, of Princeton, former Minister to Honduras, gave his
valuable service. Professor F. J. Moore, of the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, took charge of the registration bureau. Hon. Charles H.
Sherrill, former Ambassador to the Argentine, and Charles Edward
Russell, the Socialist, and his wife, were among our best workers.
Alexander R. Gulick was at the head of the busy correspondence
department. Van Santvoord Merle-Smith, Evans Hubbard, and my son ran the
banking department. These are only a few names among the many good men
and women who helped their country for love.
My library was the Diplomatic Office, to which the despatches and the
passports came; the Conference Chamber, where all vexed questions were
discussed and decided; the Court of Appeal, where people who thought
they had not received fair treatment could present their complaints; and
the Consolation Room, where the really distressed, as well as the
slightly hysterical, came to tell their troubles. Some of them were
tragic and some comic. The most agitated and frightened persons were
among the fat commercial men. The women, as a rule, were fine and steady
and cheerful, especially the American-born. They met the adventure with
good sense and smiling faces; asked with commendable brevity for the
best advice or service that we could give them; and usually took the
advice and were more grateful for the service than it deserved.
So the days rolled on, full of infinitely varied cares and labors; and
every afternoon, about five o'clock, the whole staff with a dozen or a
score of our passing friends, went out under the spreading chestnut-tree
in the back garden for a half-hour of tea and talk. It was all very
peaceful and democratic. We were in neutral, friendly Holland. The big,
protecting shield of "Uncle Sam" was over us, and we felt safe.
III
Yet how near, how fearful, was the fierce reality of the unpardonable
war! Belgium was invaded by the Germans, an hour or two away from us. At
any moment their troops might be tempted to take the short cut through
the narrow strip of Dutch territory which runs so far down into Belgium;
and then the neutrality of Holland would be gone! The little country
would be part of the battle-field. Holland has always been resolved to
fight any invader.
All through August and September, 1914, that fear hung over the Dutch
people. It recurred later again and again--whenever a movement of German
troops came too close to the borders of Holland; whenever a newspaper
tale of impending operations transpired from Berlin or London. Once or
twice the anxiety rose almost to a popular panic. But I noticed that
even then the stock-market at Amsterdam remained calm. Now, the Dutch
are a very prudent folk, especially the bankers. Therefore I concluded
that somebody had received strong assurances both from Germany and Great
Britain that neither would invade the Netherlands provided the other
abstained.
But all the time there was that dreadful example of the "scrap of
paper"--the treaty which had been no protection for Belgium--to shake
confidence in any pledge of Germany. And all the time the news from just
beyond the border grew more and more horrible. Towns and villages were
looted and burned. Civilians were massacred; women outraged; children
brought to death. Heavy fines and ransoms were imposed for slight or
imaginary offenses. (They amounted to more than $40,000,000 in addition
to the "war contribution" exacted, which by August, 1917, had reached
$288,000,000.) Churches were ruined. Priests were shot. The country was
stripped and laid waste. All the scruples and rules by which men had
sought to moderate the needless cruelties of war were mocked and flung
aside. Ruin marked the track of the German troops, and terror ran before
their advance.
On August 19 Aerschot was sacked and 150 of its inhabitants killed. On
the 20th Andenne met the same fate and the number of the slain was 250.
On the 23d Dinant was wrecked and more than 600 men and women were
murdered. On the 25th the university library at Louvain was set on fire
and burned. The pillage and devastation of the city and its environs
continued for ten days. More than 2,000 houses were destroyed, and more
than 100 civilians were butchered. Time would fail me to tell of the
industrious little towns and the quaint Old World hamlets that were
wrecked, or of the men and women and young children who were tortured,
and had trial of mockings and bonds and imprisonment, and were slain by
the sword and by fire. Is it not all set down by sworn witnesses in the
great gray book of the Kingdom of Belgium, and in the blue book of the
committee of which Lord Bryce was the head? Have I not heard with my own
ears the agony of those whose parents were shot down before their eyes,
whose children were slain or ravished, whose wives or husbands were
carried into captivity, whose homes were made desolate, and who
themselves barely escaped with their lives?
Find an explanation for these Belgian atrocities if you can. What if a
few shots were fired by ignorant and infuriated civilians from the
windows of houses? It has not been proved. But even if it were, it would
be no reason for the martyrdom of a whole population, for the
destruction of distant and unincriminated towns, for the massacre of
evidently innocent persons.
Was it the drink found in the cellars of the houses that made the German
officers and soldiers mad? Perhaps so. But that makes the case no
better. It was stolen drink.
Was it the carrying out of the cold-blooded policy of "frightfulness" as
a necessary weapon of war? That is the wickedest excuse of all. It is
really an accusation. The probable truth of it is supported by what
happened later, when the Germans came to Poland, and when the Turks,
their allies and pupils in the art of war, slaughtered 800,000 Armenians
or drove them to a slow, painful death. It means just what the title of
this article says. The Werwolf was at large.
The first evidence of this spirit in the German conduct of the war that
came to my personal knowledge was on August 25. Two or three days
before, our American Consul-General in Antwerp, which was still the
temporary seat of the Belgian Government, had written to me saying that
he was absolutely destitute and begging me to send him some money for
the relief of his family and other Americans who were in dire need. The
Tennessee was lying off the Hook of Holland at that time, and there were
several of our splendid army officers ready and eager for any service.
One of the best of them, Captain Williams, offered himself as messenger,
and I sent him in to Antwerp, with three thousand dollars in gold in a
belt around his waist, on August 24. He had a hard, slow journey, but he
went through and delivered the money.
That very night, while he was in the city, a Zeppelin air-ship, the
first of its devilish tribe to get into action, sailed over sleeping
Antwerp dropping bombs. No military damage was done. But hundreds of
private houses were damaged and sixty destroyed. One bomb fell on a
hospital full of wounded Belgians and Germans. Scores of innocent
civilians, mostly women and children, were killed. "In a single house,"
writes an eye-witness, "I found four dead: one room was a chamber of
horrors, the remains of the mangled bodies being scattered in every
direction."
Mark the exact nature of this crime. The dropping of bombs from aircraft
is not technically illegal. The agreement of the nations to abandon and
prohibit this method of attack for five years unfortunately expired by
limitation of time in 1912 and was not renewed. But the old-established
rules of war among civilized nations have forbidden and still forbid the
bombardment of populous towns without due notice, in order that the
non-combatants may have a chance to find refuge and safety. This German
monster of the air came unannounced, in the dead of night, and, having
wrought its hellish surprise, vanished into the darkness again. This was
a crime against international law as well as a sin against humanity.
My captain returned to The Hague the next morning, bringing his report.
He had seen the horror with his own eyes. More: with the care of a true
officer he had made a map of the course taken by the air-ship in its
flight over the city. That map showed beyond a doubt that the aim of the
marauder was to destroy the principal hospital, the hotel where the
Belgian Ministers lived, and the palace in which the King and Queen with
their children were sleeping.
I cabled the facts to Washington at once, and sent the map with a fuller
report the next day. I felt deeply (and ventured to express my feeling)
that the United States could, and ought to, protest against this clear
violation of the law of nations--this glaring manifestation of a spirit
which was going to make this war the most cruel and atrocious known to
history. The foreboding of a return to barbarism has been fulfilled,
alas, only too abominably!
In every step of that downward path Germany has led the way, by the
perfection of her scientific methods applied to a devilish purpose.
Take, for example, the use of poisonous gas in warfare. This was an
ancient weapon, employed long before the beginning of the Christian era.
It had been abandoned by civilized nations, and was prohibited by one of
the Hague conventions, for a period of five years. But that period
having expired, and the convention being only a "scrap of paper,"
Germany revived the ancient deviltry in a more scientific form. On April
22, 1915, she sent the yellow clouds of death rolling down upon the
trenches of Ypres, where the British defended the last city of outraged
Belgium. The suffocating horrors of that hellish method of attack are
beyond description. The fame of this achievement of spectacled barbarism
belongs to the learned servants of the predatory Potsdam gang. But we
cannot blame the Allies if they were forced reluctantly to take up the
same weapon in self-defense.
IV
The real character and the inhuman effect of the German invasion were
brought home to us, and made painfully clear to our eyes and our hearts,
by the amazing tragic spectacle of the flood of refugees pouring out of
Belgium.
It began slowly. When the quaint frontier town of Vise, surrounded by
its goose-farms, was attacked and set on fire on August 4, there were
many families from the neighborhood who fled to Holland. When Liege was
captured on the 7th after a brave defense, and its last fort fell on the
15th, there were more fugitives. When Brussels was occupied without
resistance on the 20th there were still more. As the invasion spread
westward and southward, engulfing city after city in widening waves of
blood, the tide of terror and flight rose steadily. It reached its
high-water mark when Antwerp, after the Germans had pounded its outer
and inner circle of forts for nine days, was bombarded on October 7 and
captured on the 18th.
Nothing like that sad, fear-smitten exodus has been seen on earth in
modern times. There was something in it at once fateful, trembling, and
irresistible, which recalled De Quincey's famous story of The Flight of
a Tartar Tribe. No barrier on the Holland border could have kept that
flood of Belgian refugees out. They were an enormous flock of sheep and
lambs, harried by the Werwolf and fleeing for their lives.
But Holland did not want a barrier. She stood with open doors and arms,
offering an asylum to the distressed and persecuted.
I do not believe that any country has ever made a better record of wise,
steady, and true humanitarian work than Holland made in this matter. It
is not necessary to exaggerate it. Naturally, Belgium and Great Britain
bore by far the largest part of the financial burden of caring for the
refugees. Regular subsidies were guaranteed for this purpose. But
Holland gave freely and generously what was more important: a prompt and
sufficient welcome and shelter from the storm; abundant supplies of
money for immediate needs, food and clothing, a roof and a fire;
personal aid and care, nursing, medical attendance--all of which these
bewildered exiles needed desperately and at once.
This is not the place, nor the time, in which to attempt a full report
of the humane task which was suddenly thrown upon Holland by the deadly
doings of the German Werwolf in Belgium, nor of the way in which that
task was accepted and carried out. I shall note only a few things of
which I have personal knowledge.
Going along the railway line which leads to Antwerp, I saw every train
literally packed with fugitives. They had come, not in organized,
orderly companies, but in droves--tens of thousands, hundreds of
thousands. They were dazed and confused, escaping from they knew not
what, carried they knew not whither. It is well for the poet to say:
"Be not like dumb, driven cattle";
but what can you do in a case like this except run from hell as fast as
you can and take the first open road?
The station platforms were crowded with folks in motley garments showing
signs of wear and tear. Their possessions were done up in bags and
shapeless bundles, rolled in pieces of sacking, old shawls,
red-and-white-checkered table-cloths. The men, with drawn and heavy
faces, waited patiently. The women collected and watched their restless
flocks. The baby tugged at its mother's breast. The little sister
carried the next-to-baby in her arms. The boys, as usual, wandered
everywhere undismayed and peered curiously into everything.
The crowds were not disorderly or turbulent; there was no shrieking or
groaning. There were, of course, some of the baser sort in the vast
multitude that fled to Holland--street rowdies and other sons of Belial
from the big towns, women of the pavements, and other wretched
by-products of our social system. How could it be otherwise in a throng
of about a million, scooped up and cast out by an evil chance? But the
great bulk of the people were decent and industrious--no more angels
than the rest of us can show per thousand.
I remember a very respectable old couple, cleanly though plainly clad,
waiting at the station of a small village, looking in vain for a chance
to board the train. Everything was full except the compartment reserved
for us. We opened the door and asked them to get in. The old gentleman
explained that he was a landscape-gardener, living in a small villa with
a small garden, in a suburb of Antwerp.
"It was a beautiful garden, monsieur," he said with glistening eyes. "It
was arranged with much skill and care. We loved every bush, every
flower. But one evening three German shells fell in it and burst. The
good wife and I" (here a wan smile) "thought the climate no longer
sanitary. We ran away that night on foot. Much misery for old people.
Last night we slept in a barn with hundreds of others. But some day we
go back to restore that garden. N' est-ce pas vrai, cherie?"
Rosendaal, the Dutch custom-house town on the way to Antwerp, claims
15,000 inhabitants. In two nights at least 40,000 refugees poured into
that place. Every house from the richest to the poorest opened its doors
in hospitality. The beds and the floors were all filled with sleepers. A
big vacant factory building was fitted with improvised bunks and straw
bedding. Two thousand five hundred people were lodged there. Open-air
kitchens were set up. The burgomaster and aldermen and doctors and all
the other "leading citizens" took off their coats and worked. The best
women in the place were cooking, serving tables, nursing, making
clothes, doing all they could for their involuntary guests.
In the picturesque old city of Bergen-op-Zoom--famous in history--I saw
the same thing. There a large tent-camp had been set up for the overflow
from the houses. It was like a huge circus of distress. The city hall
was turned into an emergency storehouse of food: the vaulted halls and
chambers filled with boxes, bags, and barrels. When I went up to the
bureau of the burgomaster, his wife and daughters were there, sewing
busily for the refugees.
I visited the main hospital and the annexes which had been established
in the schoolhouses. Twice, as we climbed the steep stairs, we stood
aside for stretchers to be carried past. They bore the bodies of people
who had died from exposure and exhaustion.
In one ward there were a score of the most ancient women I have ever
seen. They had made the flight on foot. God knows how they ever did it.
One of them was so weak that she could not speak, so short of breath
that she could not lie down. As she sat propped with pillows, rocking
slowly to and fro and coughing, coughing, feebly coughing her life out,
she looked a thousand years old. Perhaps she was, if suffering measures
years.
Another room was for babies born in the terror and the flight. A few
were well-looking enough; but most of them were pitiful scraps and
tatters of humanity. They were tenderly nursed and cared for, but their
chance was slender. While I was there one of the little creatures
shuddered, breathed a tiny sigh, and slipped out of a world that was too
hard for it.
It was part of my unofficial duty to visit as many as possible of the
private shelters and hospitals and workrooms and the public camps,
because the Belgian Relief Committee and other friends in New York had
sent me considerable sums of money to use in helping the refugees. In
the careful application of these funds I had the advice of Mr. Th.
Stuart, President of the "Netherlands Relief Committee for Belgian and
Other Victims of War," and of Baron F. van Tuyll van Serooskerken, a
great friend of mine, whom the Queen had appointed as General
Commissioner to oversee all the public refugee camps.
Three of these, Nunspeet, Ede, and Uden, were improvised villages, with
blocks of long community houses, separate dormitories for the unmarried
men and for the single women, a dining-hall, a chapel, one or two
schoolhouses, a recreation-hall, a house of detention for refractory
persons, one hospital for general cases, and another for infectious
diseases. It was all built of wood, simple and primitive, but as
comfortable as could be expected under the conditions. The chief danger
of the camps was idleness. In providing work to combat this peril the
Rockefeller Foundation and the committee of the English "Society of
Friends" were of great assistance. Each of these camps had accommodation
for about 10,000 people.
The fourth camp was at the ancient city of Gouda, famed for its great
old church with stained-glass windows and for its excellent cheese and
clay pipes. This camp was the earliest and one of the most interesting
that I visited. It was established in a series of exceptionally large
and fine greenhouses, which happened to be empty when the emergency
came. Somebody--I think it was the clever Burgomaster Yssel de Scheppe
and his admirable wife--had the good idea of utilizing them for the
refugees. It seemed a curious notion, to raise human plants under glass.
But it worked finely. The houses were long and lofty; they had concrete
floors and broad concrete platforms where the "cubicles" for the
separate families could easily be erected; steam heat, electric light,
hot and cold water were already "laid on"; it was quite palatial in its
way. A few wooden houses, a laundry, a kitchen, a carpenter-shop for the
men, and so on, were quickly run up. There was a bowling-alley and a
playground and a schoolhouse. The people could go to church in the town.
Soon twenty-five hundred exiles were living in this queer but
comfortable camp.
But it was evident that this refugee life, even under the best
conditions that could be devised, was abnormal. There was not room in
the industrial life of Holland for all these people to stay there
permanently. Besides, they did not want to stay, and that counts for
something in human affairs. The question arose whether it might not be
wise to let them go home. Not to send them home, you understand. That
was never even contemplated. But simply to allow them to return to their
own country, at least in the regions where the fury of war had already
passed by. I suggested to Mr. Stuart that before you allow poor folks to
"go home," you ought to know whether they have a "home" to go to. So we
took my motor in October and made a little tour of investigation in
Belgium.
That was a strange and memorable journey. The long run in the dripping
autumn afternoon along the Antwerp Road, where the miserable fugitives
were still trudging in thousands; the search for lodgings in the
stricken city, where most of the streets were silent and deserted as if
the plague had passed there, and the only bustling life was in the
central quarter, where "the field-gray ones" abounded; the closed shops,
the house-fronts shattered by shells, the great cathedral standing in
the moonlight, unharmed as far as we could see, except for one shell
which had penetrated the south transept, just where Rubens's "Descent
from the Cross" used to hang before it was carried away for safety--I
shall never forget those impressions.
The next morning, provided with permits which the German Military
Commandant had very courteously given us, we set out on our tour. The
journey became still more strange. The beautiful trees of the suburbs
were razed to the ground, the little villas stood empty, many of them
half-ruined. (Perhaps one of them belonged to our friend the
landscape-gardener.) We could see clearly the emplacements for the big
German guns, which had been secretly laid long before the war began,
concealed in cellars and beneath innocent-looking tennis-courts. The
ring-forts surrounding Antwerp were knocked to pieces, their huge
concrete gateways, their stone facings, their high earthworks, all
battered out of shape.
Town after town through which we passed lay half-destroyed or in
complete ruins. Wavre, Waelhem, Termonde, Duffel, Lierre, and many
smaller places were in various stages of destruction, burned or
shattered by shell fire and explosives. The heaps of bricks and stones
encumbered the streets so that it was hard to pick our way through. The
smell of decaying bodies tainted the air. The fields had been inundated
in the valleys; the water was subsiding; here and there corpses lay in
the mud. Old trenches everywhere; thousands of rudely heaped graves,
marked by two crossed sticks; miles on miles of rusty barbed-wire
defenses, with dead cows or horses entangled in them, slowly rotting,
haunted by the carrion crows.
Yet there were some people in the countryside. Now and then we saw a
woman or an old man digging in field or garden. We stopped at the front
yard of a little farmhouse, where the farmer's wife stood, and asked her
some directions about the road. She gave them cheerfully, though the
house at her back was little more than a mass of ruins.
"Were you here in the fighting?" we asked.
"But no, messieurs," she answered with a short laugh. "If I had been
here, I should not be here. I ran away to Holland and returned yesterday
to my house. But how shall I creep in?" She pointed over her shoulder to
the pile of bricks. "I am not a cat or a rat."
They are indomitable, those Flemish people. At Lierre we were very
hungry and searched vainly for an inn or a grocery. At last in one of
the streets we saw a little baker-shop. The upper story was riddled and
broken. But the shop was untouched, the window-shade half up, and
underneath we could see two loaves of bread. We went in. The bare-armed
baker met us.
"Can you sell us a little bread?"
"But certainly, messieurs, that is what I am here for. Not the window
loaves, however; I have a fresh loaf, if you please. Also a little
cheese, if you will."
"Were you here in the fighting?"
"Assuredly not! It was impossible. But I hurried back after three days.
You see, messieurs, some people were returning, and me--I am the Baker
of Lierre."
He said it as if it were a title of nobility.
At Malines (Mechelen) the devastation appeared perhaps more shocking
because we had known the russet and gray old city so well in peaceful
years. Many of the streets were impassable, choked with debris. One side
of the great Square was knocked to fragments. The huge belfry, Saint
Rombaud's Tower, wherein hangs the famous carillon of more than thirty
bells, was battered but still stood firm. The vast cathedral was a
melancholy wreck of its former beauty and grandeur. The roof was but a
skeleton of bare rafters; the side wall pierced with gaping rents and
holes; the pictured windows were all gone; the sunlight streamed in
everywhere upon the stone floor, strewn with an indescribable confusion
of shattered glass, fallen beams, fragments of carved wood, and broken
images of saints.
A little house behind the Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, the roof
and upper story of which had been pierced by shells, seemed to be
occupied. We knocked and went in. The man and his wife were in the
sitting-room, trying to put it in order. Much of the furniture was
destroyed; the walls were pitted with shrapnel-scars, but the cheap
ornaments on the mantel were unbroken. In the ceiling was a big hole,
and in the floor a pit in which lay the head and fragments of a German
shell. I asked if I might have them. "Certainly," answered the man. "We
wish to keep no souvenirs of that wicked thing."
V
I do not propose to describe the magnificent work of the "Commission for
Relief in Belgium." It is too well known. Besides, it is not my story;
it is the story of Herbert Hoover, who made the idea a reality, and of
the crew of fine and fearless young Americans who worked with him.
England and France furnished more money to buy food; but the United
States, in addition to money and wheat, gave the organization, the
personal energy and toil and tact, the assurance of fair play and honest
dealing, without which that food could never have gotten into Belgium or
been distributed only to the civil population.
Holland was the door through which all the supplies for the C. R. B. had
to pass. The first two cargoes that went in I had to put through
personally, and nearly had to fight to do it. My job was to keep the
back of the United States against that door and hold it open. It was not
always easy. I was obliged to make protests, remonstrances, and polite
suggestions about what would happen if certain things were not done.
Once the Germans refused to give any more "safe-conduct passes" for
relief ships on the return voyage. Of course, that would have made the
work impossible. A German aircraft bombed one of these ships. I put the
matter mildly but firmly to the German Minister. "This work is in your
interest. It relieves you from the burden of feeding a lot of people
whom you would otherwise be bound to feed. You want it to go on?" "Yes,
certainly, by all means." "Well, then, you will have to stop attacking
the C. R. B. ships or else the work will have to stop. The case is very
simple. There is only one thing to do." He promised to take the matter
up with Berlin at once. In a couple of days the answer came: "Very
sorry. Regrettable mistake. Aviator could not see markings on side and
stern of ship. Advise large horizontal signs painted on top deck of
ships, visible from above. Safe-conducts will be granted."
When this was told to Captain White, a clever Yankee sea-captain who had
general charge of the C. R. B. shipping, he laughed considerably and
then said: "Why, look-a-here, I'll paint those boats all over, top,
sides, and bottom, if that'll only keep the ---- Germans from sinkin'
'em."
From a million and a half to two million men, women, and children in
Belgium and northern France were saved from starving to death by the
work of the C. R. B. The men who were doing it had a chance to observe
the conditions in those invaded countries. They came to the Legation at
The Hague and told simply what they knew. We got the real story of Miss
Cavell, cruelly done to death by "field-gray" officers. We got full
descriptions of the system of deporting the civil population--a system
which amounted to enslavement, with a taint of "white slavery" thrown
in. When the Belgian workmen were suddenly called from their homes,
herded before the German commandant, and sent away, they knew not
whither, to work for their oppressor, as they were entrained they sang
the "Marseillaise." They knew they would be punished for it, kept
without food, put to the hardest labor. But they sang it. They knew that
France, and England too, were fighting for them, for their rights, for
their liberty. They believed that it would come. They were not conquered
yet.
Here I must break off my story for a month. It has not been well told.
Words cannot render the impression of black horror that lay upon us, the
fierce indignation that stirred us, during all those months while we
were doing the tasks of peace in peaceful Holland.
We were bound to be neutral in conduct. That was the condition of our
service to the wounded, the prisoners, the refugees, the sufferers, of
both sides. We lived up to that condition at The Hague without a single
criticism from anybody--except the subsidized German-American press in
the United States.
But to be neutral in thought and feeling--ah, that was beyond my power.
I knew that the predatory Potsdam gang had chosen and forced the war in
order to realize their robber-dream of Pan-Germanism. I knew that they
were pushing it with unheard-of atrocity in Belgium and northern France,
in Poland and Servia and Armenia. I knew that they had challenged and
attacked the whole world of peace-loving nations. I knew that America
belonged to that imperilled world. I knew that there could be no secure
labor and no quiet sleep in any land so long as the Potsdam Werwolf was
at large.