She thought you were gallant and gay;
Such men as the peasants of Flanders:
The friends of a child at play.
She saw the sun on your helmets,
The sparkle of glancing light.
She saw your bayonets flashing,
And she laughed at your Prussian might.
Then you gave her death for her laughter,
As you looked on her mischievous face.
You hated the tiny peasant,
With the hate of your famous race.
You were not frenzied and angry;
You were cold and efficient and keen.
Your thrust was as thorough and deadly
As the stroke of a faithful machine.
You stabbed her deep with your rifle:
You had good reason to sing,
As you footed it on through Flanders
Past the broken and quivering thing.
Something impedes your advancing,
A dragging has come on your hosts.
And Paris grows dim now, and dimmer,
Through the blur of your raucous boasts.
Your singing is sometimes broken
By guttural German groans.
Your ankles are wet with _her_ bleeding,
Your pike is blunt from _her_ bones.
The little peasant has tripped you.
She hangs to your bloody stride.
And the dimpled hands are fastened
Where they fumbled before she died.
THE STEAM ROLLER
The Steam Roller, the final method, now operating in Belgium to flatten
her for all time, is the most deadly and universal of the three. It is a
calculated process to break the human spirit. People speak as if the
injury done Belgium was a thing of the past. It is at its height now.
The spy system with its clerks, waiters, tourists, business managers,
reached directly only some thousands of persons. The atrocities wounded
and killed many thousands of old men, women, and children. But the
German occupation and sovereignty at the present moment are
denationalizing more than six million people. The German conquerors
operate their Steam Roller by clever lies, thus separating Belgium from
her real friends; by taxation, thus breaking Belgium economically; by
enforced work on food supplies, railways, and ammunition, thus forcing
Belgian peasants to feed their enemy's army and destroy their own army,
and so making unwilling traitors out of patriots; by fines and
imprisonment that harass the individual Belgian who retains any sense of
nationality; by official slander from Berlin that the Belgians are the
guilty causes of their own destruction; and finally by the fact of
sovereignty itself, that at one stroke breaks the inmost spirit of a
free nation.
I was still in Ghent when the Germans moved up to the suburbs.
"I can put my artillery on Ghent," said the German officer to the
American vice-consul.
That talk is typical of the tone of voice used to Belgians: threat
backed by murder.
The whole policy of the Germans of late is to treat the Belgian matter
as a thing accomplished.
"It is over. Let bygones be bygones."
It is a process like the trapping of an innocent woman, and when she is
trapped, saying,
"Now you are compromised, anyway, so you had better submit."
A friend of mine who remained in Ghent after the German occupation, had
German officers billetted in his home. Daily, industriously, they said
to him that the English had been poor friends of his country, that they
had been late in coming to the rescue. Germany was the friend, not
England. In the homes throughout Belgium, these unbidden guests are
claiming slavery is a beneficent institution, that it is better to be
ruled by the German military, and made efficient for German ends, than
to continue a free people.
For a year, our Red Cross Corps worked under the direction and authority
of the Belgian prime minister, Baron de Broqueville. The prime minister
in the name of his government has sent to this country an official
protest against the new tax levied by the Germans on his people. The
total tax for the German occupation amounts to $192,000,000. He writes:
"The German military occupation during the last fifteen months has
entirely prevented all foreign trade, has paralyzed industrial activity,
and has reduced the majority of the laboring classes to enforced
idleness. Upon the impoverished Belgian population whom Germany has
unjustly attacked, upon whom she has brought want and distress, who have
been barely saved from starvation by the importation of food which
Germany should have provided--upon this population, Germany now imposes
a new tax, equal in amount to the enormous tax she has already imposed
and is regularly collecting."
[Illustration: One of the dangerous Belgian franc-tireurs, who made it
necessary for the German Army to burn and bayonet babies and old women.
His name is Gaspar. He is three years old.]
The Belgian Legation has protested unavailingly to our Government that
Germany, in violation of The Hague Conventions, has forced Belgian
workmen to perform labor for the German army. Belgian Railway employees
at Malines, Luttre and elsewhere refused to perform work which would
have released from the transportation service and made available for the
trenches an entire German Army Corps. These Belgian workmen were
subjected to coersive measures, which included starvation and cruel
punishments. Because of these penalties on Belgians refusing to be
traitors, many went to hospitals in Germany, and others returned broken
in health to Belgium.
After reading the chapter on the German spy system, a Belgian wrote me:
"That spying business is not yet the worst. Since then, the Germans have
succeeded in outdoing all that. The basest and the worst that one can
dream of is it not that campaign of slander and blackmail which they
originated after their violation of Belgium's neutrality? Of course they
did it--as a murderer who slanders his victim--in the hope to justify
their crime."
It is evil to murder non-combatants. It is more evil to "rationalize"
the act--to invent a moral reason for doing an infamous thing. First,
Belgium suffered a vivisection, a veritable martyrdom. Now, she is
officially informed by her executioners that she was the guilty party.
She is not allowed to protest. She must sit quietly under the charge
that her sacrifice was not a sacrifice at all, but the penalty paid for
her own misbehavior. This is a more cruel thing than the spying that
sapped her and the atrocities practised upon her, because it is more
cruel to take a man's honor than his property and his life.
"If the peasants had stayed in their houses, they would have been safe."
When they stayed in their houses they were burned along with the houses.
I saw this done on September 7, 1914, at Melle.
"The peasants shot from their houses at the advancing German army."
I saw German atrocities. The peasants did not shoot. It is the old
familiar formula of the _franc-tireur_. That means that the peasant, not
a soldier, dressed in the clothing of a civilian, takes advantage of his
immunity as a noncombatant, to secrete a rifle, and from some shelter
shoot at the enemy army. The Bishop of Namur writes:
"It is evident that the German army trod the Belgian soil and carried
out the invasion with the preconceived idea that it would meet with
bands of this sort, a reminiscence of the war of 1870. But German
imagination will not suffice to create that which does not exist.
"There never existed a single body of _francs-tireurs_ in Belgium.
"No 'isolated instance' even is known of civilians having fired upon the
troops, although there would have been no occasion for surprise if any
individual person had committed an excess. In several of our villages
the population was exterminated because, as the military authorities
alleged, a major had been killed or a young girl had attempted to kill
an officer, and so forth.... In no case has an alleged culprit been
discovered and designated by name."
This lie--that the peasants brought their own death on themselves--was
rehearsed before the war, as a carefully learned lesson. The army came
prepared to find the excuse for the methodical outrages which they
practised. In the fight in the Dixmude district, a German officer of the
202e Infantry had a letter with this sentence on his body:
"There are a lot of _francs-tireurs_ with the enemy."
There were none. He had found what he had been drilled to find, in the
years of preparedness. The front lines of the Yser were raked clear by
shell, rifle, and machine-gun fire. The district was in ruins. I know,
because I worked there with our Red Cross Corps through those three
weeks. The humorous explanation of this is given by one of the Fusilier
Marin Lieutenants--that the blue cap and the red pompon of the famous
fighting sailors of France looked strangely to the Germans, who took the
wearers for _francs-tireurs_, terror suggesting the idea. But this is
the kindly humor of Brittany. The saucy sailor caps could not have
looked strangely to German eyes, because a few weeks earlier those
"Girls with the red pompon" had held the German army corps at Melle, and
not even terror could have made them look other than terribly familiar.
No. The officers had been faithfully trained to find militant peasants
under arms, and to send back letters and reports of their discovery,
which could later be used in official excuses for frightfulness. This
letter is one that did not get back to Berlin, later to appear in a
White Paper, as justification for official murder of non-combatants.
The picture projected by the Great German Literary Staff is too
imaginative. Think of that Army of the Invasion with its army corps
riding down through village streets--the Uhlan cavalry, the innumerable
artillery, the dense endless infantry, the deadly power and swing of it
all--and then see the girl-child of Alost, and the white-haired woman,
eighty years old--aiming their rifles at that cavalcade. It is a
literary creation, not a statement of fact. I have been in villages
when German troops were entering, had entered, and were about to enter.
I saw helpless, terror-stricken women huddled against the wall, children
hiding in their skirts, old men dazed and vague.
Then, as the blue-gray uniforms appeared at the head of the street, with
sunlight on the pikes and helmets, came the cry--half a sob, "Les
Allemands."
The German fabrications are unworthy. Let the little slain children, and
the violated women, sleep in honor. Your race was stern enough in doing
them to death. Let them alone, now that you have cleared them from your
path to Paris.
Doctor George Sarton, of the University of Ghent writes me:
"During the last months, the Germans have launched new slanders against
Belgium. Their present tactics are more discreet and seem to be
successful. Many 'neutral' travelers--especially Americans and
Swiss--have been to Belgium to see the battlefields or, perhaps, to get
an idea of what such an occupation by foreign soldiers exactly amounts
to. Of course, these men can see nothing without the assistance of the
German authorities, and they can but see what is shown to them. The
greater their curiosity, the more courtesy extended to them, the more
also they feel indebted to their German hosts. These are well aware of
it: the sightseers are taken in their net, and with a very few
exceptions, their critical sense is quickly obliterated. We have
recently been shown one of the finest specimens of these American
tourists: Mr. George B. McCellan, professor of History at Princeton, who
made himself ridiculous by writing a most superficial and inaccurate
article for the "Sunday Times Magazine".
"When the good folks of Belgium recollect the spying business that was
carried on at their expense by their German 'friends,' they are not
likely to trust much their German enemies. They know that the Germans
are quite incapable of keeping to themselves any fact that they may
learn--in whatever confidential and intimate circumstances--if this fact
is of the smallest use to their own country. As it is perfectly
impossible to trust them, the best is to avoid them, and that is what
most Belgians are doing.
"American tourists seeing Belgium through German courtesy are considered
by the Belgians just as untrustworthy as the Germans themselves. This is
the right attitude, as there is no possibility left to the Belgians (in
Belgium) of testing the morality and the neutrality of their visitors.
The result of which is that these visitors are entirely given up to
their German advisers; _all their knowledge is of German origin_. Of
course, the Germans take advantage of this situation and make a show of
German efficiency and organization.--'Don't you know: the Germans have
done so much for Belgium! Why, everybody knows that this country was
very inefficient, very badly managed ... a poor little country without
influence.... See what the Germans have made of it.... There was no
compulsory education, and the number of illiterates was scandalously
high,' (I am sorry to say that this at least is true.) 'They are
introducing compulsory and free education. In the big towns, sexual
morality was rather loose, but the Germans are now regulating all that.'
(You should hear German officers speak of prostitution in Antwerp and
Brussels.) 'The evil was great, but fortunately the Germans came and are
cleaning up the country.'--That is their way of doing and talking. It
does not take them long to convince ingenuous and uncritical Americans
that everything is splendidly regulated by German efficiency, and that
if only the Belgians were complying, everything would be all right in
Belgium. Are not the Belgians very ungrateful?
"The Belgians do appreciate American generosity; they realize that
almost the only rays of happiness that reach their country come from
America. They will never forget it; that disinterested help coming from
over the seas has a touch of romance; it is great and comforting; it is
the bright and hopeful side of the war. The Belgians know how to value
this. But, as to what the Germans are doing, good or not, they will
never appreciate that--what does it matter? The Belgians do not care one
bit for German reforms; they do not even deign to consider them; they
simply ignore them. There is _one_--only one--reform that they will
appreciate; the German evacuation. All the rest does not count. When
the Germans speak of cleaning the country, the Belgians do not
understand. From their point of view, there is only one way to clean
it--and that is for the Germans to clear out.
"The Germans are very disappointed that a certain number of Belgians
have been able to escape, either to enlist in the Belgian army or to
live abroad. Of course, the more Belgians are in their hands, the more
pressure they can exert. They are now slandering the Belgians who have
left their country--all the 'rich' people who are 'feasting' abroad
while their countrymen are starving.
"The fewer Belgians there are in German hands, the better it is. The
Belgians whose ability is the most useful, are considered useful by the
Germans for the latter's sake. Must it not be a terrible source of
anxiety for these Belgians to think that all the work they manage to do
is directly or indirectly done for Germany? It is not astonishing that
she wants to restore 'business, as usual' in Belgium, and that in many
cases she has tried to force the Belgian workers to earn for her. Let
me simply refer to the protest recently published by the Belgian
Legation. But for the American Commission for Relief, the Belgians would
have had to choose between starvation and work--work for
Germany--starvation or treason. Nothing shows better the greatness and
moment of the American work. Without the material and moral presence of
the United States, Belgium would have simply been turned into a nation
of slaves--starvation or treason.
"If I were in Belgium, I could say nothing; I would have to choose
between silence and prison, or silence and death. Remember Edith Cavell.
An enthusiastic, courageous man is running as many risks in Belgium now,
as he would have in the sixteenth century under the Spanish domination.
The hundred eyes of the Spanish Inquisition were then continually prying
into everything--bodies and souls; one felt them even while one was
sleeping. The German Secret Service is not less pitiless and it is more
efficient.
"The process of slander and lie carried on by the Germans to 'flatten'
Belgium is, to my judgment, the worst of their war practices. It is
very efficient indeed. But, however efficient it may be, it will be
unsuccessful as to its main purpose. The Germans will not be able to bow
Belgian heads. As long as the Belgians do not admit that they have been
conquered, they are not conquered, and in the meanwhile the Germans are
merely aggravating their infamy. It was an easy thing to over-run the
unprepared Belgian soil--but the Belgian spirit is unconquerable.
"Belgium may slumber, but die--never."
When men act as part of an implacable machine, they act apart from their
humanity. They commit unbelievable horrors, because the thing that moves
them is raw force, untouched by fine purpose and the elements of mercy.
When I think of Germans, man by man, as they lay wounded, waiting for us
to bring them in and care for them as faithfully as for our own, I know
that they have become human in their defeat. We are their friends as we
break them. In spite of their treachery and cruelty and cold hatred, we
shall save them yet. Cleared of their evil dream and restored to our
common humanity, they will have a more profound sorrow growing out of
this war than any other people, for Belgium and France only suffered
these things, but the great German race committed them.
MY EXPERIENCE WITH BAEDEKER
When I went to Belgium, friends said to me, "You must take 'Baedeker's
Belgium' with you; it is the best thing on the country." So I did. I
used it as I went around. The author doesn't give much about himself,
and that is a good feature in any book, but I gathered he was a German,
a widely traveled man, and he seems to have spent much time in Belgium,
for I found intimate records of the smallest things. I used his guide
for five months over there. I must say right here I was disappointed in
it. And that isn't just the word, either. I was annoyed by it. It gave
all the effect of accuracy, and then when I got there it wasn't so. He
kept speaking of buildings as "beautiful," "one of the loveliest
unspoiled pieces of thirteenth century architecture in Europe," and when
I took a lot of trouble and visited the building, I found it half down,
or a butt-end, or sometimes ashes. I couldn't make his book tally up.
It doesn't agree with the landscape and the look of things. He will take
a perfectly good detail and stick it in where it doesn't belong, and
leave it there. And he does it all in a painstaking way and with evident
sincerity.
His volume had been so popular back in his own country that it had
brought a lot of Germans into Belgium. I saw them everywhere. They were
doing the same thing I was doing, checking up what they saw with the map
and text and things. Some of them looked puzzled and angry, as they went
around. I feel sure they will go home and give Baedeker a warm time,
when they tell him they didn't find things as he had represented.
For one thing, he makes out Belgium a lively country, full of busy,
contented people, innocent peasants, and sturdy workmen and that sort of
thing. Why, it's the saddest place in the world. The people are not
cheery at all. They are depressed. It's the last place I should think of
for a holiday, now that I have seen it. And that's the way it goes, all
through his work. Things are the opposite of what he says with so much
meticulous care. He would speak of "gay café life" in a place that
looked as if an earthquake had hit it, and where the only people were
some cripples and a few half-starved old folks. If he finds that sort of
thing gay as he travels around, he is an easy man to please. It was so
wherever I went. It isn't as if he were wrong at some one detail. He is
wrong all over the place, all over Belgium. It's all different from the
way he says it is. I know his fellow-countrymen who are there now will
bear me out in this.
Let me show one place. I took his book with me and used it on Nieuport.
That's a perfectly fair test, because Nieuport is like a couple of
hundred other towns.
"Nieuport," says Herr Baedeker, "a small and quiet place on the Yser."
It is one of the noisiest places I have ever been in. There was a day
and a half in May when shells dropped into the streets and houses, every
minute. Every day at least a few screaming three-inch shells fall on the
village. Aëroplanes buzz overhead, shrapnel pings in the sky. Rifle
bullets sing like excited telegraph wires. If Baedeker found Nieuport
a quiet place, he was brought up in a boiler factory.
[Illustration: Baedeker, the distinguished German writer, states that
this Fifteenth Century Gothic church in Nieuport has "a modern timber
roof." We looked for it.]
His very next phrase puzzled me--"with 3500 inhabitants," he says.
And I didn't see one. There were dead people in the ruins of the houses.
The soldiers used to unearth them from time to time. I remember that the
poet speaks of "the poor inhabitant below," when he is writing of a body
in a grave. It must be in that sense that Baedeker specifies those 3500
inhabitants. But he shouldn't do that kind of imaginative touch. It
isn't in his line. And it might mislead people.
Think of a stranger getting into Nieuport after dark on a wet night,
with his mind all set on the three hotels Baedeker gives him a choice
of.
"All unpretending," he says.
Just the wrong word. Why, those hotels are brick dust. They're flat on
the ground. There isn't a room left. He means "demolished." He doesn't
use our language easily. I can see that. It is true they are
unpretending, but that isn't the first word you would use about them,
not if you were fluent.
Then he gives a detail that is unnecessary. He says you can sleep or eat
there for a "franc and a half." That exactitude is out of place. It is
labored. I ask you what a traveler would make of the "1½ fr. _pour
diner_," when he came on that rubbish heap which is the Hotel of
Hope--"Hotel de l'Espérance." That is like Baedeker, all through his
volume. He will give a detail, like the precise cost of this dinner,
when there isn't any food in the neighborhood. It wouldn't be so bad if
he'd sketch things in general terms. That I could forgive. But it is too
much when he makes a word-picture of a Flemish table d'hôte for a franc
and a half in a section of country where even the cats are starving.
His next statement is plain twisted. "Nieuport is noted for its
obstinate resistance to the French."
I saw French soldiers there every day. They were defending the place.
His way of putting it stands the facts on their head.
"And (is noted) for the 'Battle of the Dunes' in 1600."
That is where the printer falls down. I was there during the Battle of
the Dunes. The nine is upside down in the date as given.
I wouldn't object so much if he were careless with facts that were
harmless, like his hotels and his dinner and his dates. But when he
gives bad advice that would lead people into trouble, I think he ought
to be jacked up. Listen to this:
"We may turn to the left to inspect the locks on the canals to Ostend."
Baedeker's proposal here means sure death to the reader who tries it.
That section is lined with machine guns. If a man began turning and
inspecting, he would be shot. Baedeker's statement is too casual. It
sounds like a suggestion for a leisurely walk. It isn't a sufficient
warning against doing something which shortens life. The word "inspect"
is unfortunate. It gives the reader the idea he is invited to nose
around those locks, when he had really better quiet down and keep away.
The sentries don't want him there. I should have written that sentence
differently. His kind of unconsidered advice leads to a lot of sadness.
"The Rue Longue contains a few quaint old houses."
It doesn't contain any houses at all. There are some heaps of scorched
rubble. "Quaint" is word painting.
"On the south side of this square rises the dignified Cloth Hall."
There is nothing dignified about a shattered, burned, tottering old
building. Why will he use these literary words?
"With a lately restored belfry."