will be killed in the army--my two sons, all--and we will starve before
it is all over!"
[Sidenote: The Germans no longer hope for a big victory.]
The German citizens, in that section at least, had given up hope of
being able to score the big victory that was in every mind when the war
started. What the outcome would be did not seem to be clear to them. All
they knew was that the work meant misery for them, and that, as far as
they could see, this misery would continue on and on indefinitely. They
had lost confidence in the newspapers. It was plain to be seen that the
stereotyped rubber-stamped kind of official news that got into the
papers did not satisfy them. Many's the time I heard bitter curses
heaped upon the Hobenzollerns by lips that were flabby and colorless
from starvation.
[Sidenote: News of unrestricted submarine warfare.]
There was much excitement among them when, early in 1917, the news
spread that unrestricted submarine warfare was to be resumed. Old Fritz
came over to me with a newspaper in his hand and his eyes fairly popping
with excitement.
"This will end it!" he declared. "We are going to starve you out, you
English."
"You'll bring America in," I told him.
"No, no!" he said, quite confidently. "The Yankees won't come in. They
are making too much money as it is. They won't fight. See, here it is in
the paper. It is stated clearly here that the United States will not
fight. It doesn't dare to fight!"
But when the news came that the United States had actually declared war
they were a sad lot. I took the first opportunity to pump old Fritz
about the views of his companions.
"It's bad, bad," he said, shaking his head dolefully.
"Then you are afraid of the Americans, after all?" I said.
[Sidenote: Why Fritz was sorry to have America in the war.]
Fritz laughed, with a short, contemptuous note. "No, it is not that," he
said. "England will be starved out before the Americans can come in and
then it will all be over. But--just between us, you and me--most of us
here were intending to go to America, after the war, where we would be
free from all this. But--now the United States won't let us in after the
war!"
I shall never forget the day that the papers announced the refusal of
the English labor delegates to go to Stockholm. One excited miner struck
me across the face with the open newspaper in his hand.
[Sidenote: Hatred of the English.]
"Always, always the same!" he almost screamed. "The English block
everything. They will not join and what good can come now of the
conference? They will not be content and the war must go on!"
[Sidenote: Shortage in necessities of life.]
The food shortage reached a crisis about the time that I managed, after
three futile attempts, to escape. Frequently, when the people took their
bread tickets to the stores they found that supplies had been exhausted
and that there was nothing to be obtained. Prices had gone sky-high.
Bacon, for instance, $2.50 and more a pound. A cake of soap cost 85
cents. Cleanliness became a luxury. These prices are indicative of the
whole range and it is not hard to see the struggle these poor mine
people were having to keep alive at all.
[Sidenote: Prisoners receive food from England.]
[Sidenote: Germans wonder at food of starving England.]
At this time our parcels from England were coming along fairly regularly
and we were better off for food than the Germans themselves. Owing to
the long shift we were compelled to do in the mines we fell into the
habit of "hoarding" our food parcels and carrying a small lunch to the
mines each day. These lunches had to be carefully secreted or the
Germans would steal them. They could not understand how it was that
starving England could send food abroad to us. The sight of these
lunches helped to undermine their faith in the truth of the official
information they read in the newspapers.
[Sidenote: Wages spent for soap.]
Our lot at the mines was almost unendurable. We were supposed to receive
four and a half marks (90 cents) a week for our labor, but there was
continual "strafing" to reduce the amount. If we looked sideways at a
"stagger," we were likely to receive a welt with a pick handle and a
strafe of several marks. Sometimes we only received a mark or two for a
week's work. Most of this we spent for soap. It was impossible to work
in the mine and not become indescribably dirty, and soap became an
absolute necessity.
[Sidenote: Uncomfortable quarters.]
We lived under conditions of great discomfort in the camp, 250 of us in
30 x 30 quarters. There were two stoves in the building in which coke
was burned, but the place was terribly cold. The walls at all seasons
were so damp that pictures tacked up on them mildewed in a short time.
Our bunks contained straw which was never replenished and we all became
infested with fleas. Some nights it was impossible to sleep on account
of the activity of these pests. On account of the dampness and cold we
always slept in our clothes.
[Sidenote: Cruelty of discipline.]
[Sidenote: Seven plan to escape.]
Discipline was rigorous and cruel. We were knocked around and given
terms of solitary confinement and made to stand at attention for hours
at the least provocation. Many of the prisoners were killed--murdered by
the cruelty. It became more than flesh and blood could stand. One day
seven of us got together and made a solemn compact to escape. We would
keep at it, we decided, no matter what happened, until we got away. Six
of us are now safely at home. The seventh, my chum, J. W. Nicholson, is
still a prisoner.
I made four attempts to escape before I finally succeeded. The first
time a group of us made a tunnel out under the barricade, starting
beneath the flooring of the barracks. We crawled out at night and had
put fifteen miles between us and the camp before we were finally caught.
I got seven days' "black" that time, solitary confinement in a narrow
stone cell, without a ray of light, on black bread and water.
[Sidenote: Two attempts to escape fail and are punished.]
The second attempt was again by means of a tunnel. A chum of mine,
William Raesides, who had come over with the 8th C. M. R.'s, was my
companion that time. We were caught by bloodhounds after twenty miles
and they gave us ten days' "black."
[Sidenote: The third attempt.]
The third attempt was made in company with my chum Nicholson, and we
planned it out very carefully. Friends in England sent through suits of
civilian clothes to us.
The next day we dressed up for the attempt by putting on our "civies"
first and then drawing our prisoner's uniform over them. When we got to
the mine we took off the uniform and slipped the mining clothes on over
the others. We worked all day. Coming up from work in the late
afternoon, Nick and I held back until everyone else had gone. We went up
alone in the hoist and tore off our mining clothes as we ascended,
dropping each piece back into the pit as we discarded it.
It was fairly dark when we got out of the hoist and the guards did not
pay much attention to us. There was a small building at the mine head
where we prisoners washed and dressed after work and a separate exit for
the civilians. Nick and I took the civilian exit and walked out into
the street without any interference.
[Sidenote: Near the Dutch border.]
We could both speak enough German to pass, so we boldly struck out for
the Dutch border, which was about 85 miles away, traveling only during
the night. We had a map that a miner had sold to us for a cake of soap
and we guided our course by that. We got to the border line without any
trouble whatever, but were caught through overconfidence, due to a
mistake in the map. Close to the line was a milepost indicating that a
certain Dutch town was two miles west. The map indicated that this town
was four miles within the Dutch border.
[Sidenote: Captured and punished again.]
"We're over!" we shouted when we saw that welcome milepost. Throwing
caution aside, we marched boldly forward, right into a couple of
sentries with fixed bayonets!
It was two weeks' "black" they meted out to us that time. The
Kommandant's eyes snapped as he passed sentence. I knew he would have
been much more strict on me as the three-time offender had it not been
that the need for coal was so dire that labor, even the labor of a
recalcitrant prisoner, was valuable.
"No prisoner has yet escaped from this Kommando!" he shouted, "and none
shall. Any further attempts will be punished with the utmost severity."
[Sidenote: A new method of getaway planned.]
Nevertheless they took the precaution to break up my partnership with
Nicholson, putting him on the night shift. I immediately went into
partnership with Private W. M. Masters, of Toronto, and we planned to
make our getaway by an entirely new method.
The building at the mine where we changed clothes before and after work
was equipped with a bathroom in one corner, with a window with one iron
bar intersecting. Outside the window was a bush and beyond that open
country. A sentry was always posted outside the building, but he had
three sides to watch and we knew that, if we could only move that bar,
we could manage to elude the sentry. So we started to work on the bar.
[Sidenote: Four months' steady work.]
I had found a bit of wire which I kept secreted about me and every
night, after washing up, we would dig for a few minutes at the brickwork
around the bar. It was slow, tedious and disappointing work. Gradually,
however, we scooped the brick out around the bar and after nearly four
months' application we had it so loosened that a tug would pull it out.
[Sidenote: Night in a bog.]
The next day Masters and I were the last in the bathroom, and when the
sentry's round had taken him to the other side of the building, we
wrenched out the bar, raised the window and wriggled through head first,
breaking our fall in the bush outside. We got through without attracting
attention and ran across the country into a swamp, where we soon lost
our way and wallowed around all night up to our knees in the bog,
suffering severely from the cold and damp. Early in our flight the
report of a gun from the camp warned us that our absence had been
discovered. Our adventure in the swamp saved us from capture, for the
roads were patrolled by cavalry that night.
We found our way out of the swamp near morning, emerging on the western
side. By the sale of more soap to miners we had acquired another map and
a compass, so we had little difficulty in determining our whereabouts
and settling our course for the border. For food we had each brought
along ten biscuits, the result of several weeks' hoarding.
That day we stayed on the edge of the swamp, never stirring for a moment
from the shelter of a clump of bushes. One slept while the other
watched. No one came near us and we heard no signs of our pursuers.
Night came on most mercifully dark and we struck out along the roads at
a smart clip.
We traveled all night, making probably twenty-five miles. It was
necessary, we knew, to make the most of our strength in the earlier
stages of the dash. As our food gave out we would be less capable of
covering the ground. So we spurred ourselves on to renewed effort and
ate the miles up in a sort of frenzy.
This kept up for four days and nights. We kept going as hard as our
waning strength would permit and we were cautious in the extreme. Even
at that we had many narrow escapes.
[Sidenote: Crossing the Lippe River.]
Our greatest difficulty was when we struck the Lippe River. Our first
plan was to swim across, but we found that we had not the strength left
for this feat. We lost a day as a result. The second night we found a
scow tied up along the bank and got across that way.
[Sidenote: Rapid progress, though starving.]
By this time we were slowly starving on our feet, we were wet through
continuously, and such sleep as we got was broken and fitful. Before we
had been four days out we were reduced to gaunt, tattered, dirty
scarecrows. We staggered as we walked and sometimes one of us would drop
on the road through sheer weakness. Through it all we kept up our frenzy
for speed and it was surprising how much ground we forced ourselves to
cover in a night. And, no matter how much the pangs of hunger gnawed at
us, we conserved our fast dwindling supply of biscuit. Less than two
biscuits a day was our limit!
Finally we reached a point that I recognized from my previous attempt to
escape. It was about four miles from the border. We had two biscuits
left between us. The next day we feasted royally and extravagantly on
those two biscuits. No longer did we need to hoard our supplies, for the
next night would tell the tale.
[Sidenote: Safe past the German sentries.]
By the greatest good fortune night came on dark and cloudy. Not a star
showed in the sky. We crawled cautiously and painfully toward the
border. At every sound we stopped and flattened out. Twice we saw
sentries close at hand, but both times we got by safely. Finally we
reached what we judged must be the last line of sentries. We had crawled
across a ploughed field and reached a road lined on both sides with
trees where sentries were passing up and down.
"It's the border!" we whispered.
When the nearest sentry had reached the far end of his beat we doubled
up like jack-knives and dashed across that road, plunging through the
trees on the other side. Not a sound came from the sentries. We struck
across fields with delirious speed, we reeled along like drunken men,
laughing and gasping and sometimes reaching out for a mutual handshake.
[Sidenote: Across the border in Holland.]
Then we got a final scare. Marching up the road toward us was what
looked like a white sheet. Our nerves were badly shattered, and that
moving thing froze my blood, but it was a scare of brief duration. The
sheet soon resolved itself into two girls in white dresses, walking up
the road with a man. We scurried to the side of the road as soon as we
made them out. Then I decided to test the matter of our whereabouts and
stepped out to accost them.
"Have you a match?" I asked in German.
The man did not understand me!
We were in Holland--_and free_!
* * * * *
Little was heard from the Belgians themselves of the hardships and
suffering endured by them under the rule of the Germans. Occasionally,
however, an eye-witness from the outside was able to present some
aspects of the terrible picture. The narrative of such an eye-witness is
given in the following pages.
UNDER GERMAN RULE IN FRANCE AND BELGIUM
J. P. WHITAKER
[Sidenote: The German iron heel on Roubaix.]
Toward the end of March, 1915, a distinct change became noticeable in
the policy of the German military authorities, and for the first time
the people of Roubaix began to feel the iron heel. The allied
Governments had formally declared their intention of blockading Germany
and the German Army had been given a sharp lesson at Neuve Chapelle.
Whether these two events had anything to do with the change, or whether
it was merely a coincidence, I do not know; the fact remains that our
German governors who had hitherto treated us with tolerable leniency
chose about this time to initiate a regime of stringent regulation and
repression.
[Sidenote: Identification papers.]
The first sign of the new policy was the issue of posters calling on all
men, women, and children over the age of 14 to go to the Town Hall and
take out identification papers, while all men between 17 and 50 were
required also to obtain a control card.
Up to this time I had escaped any interference from the Germans, perhaps
because I scarcely ventured into the streets for the first two months of
the German occupation, and possibly also because, from a previous long
residence in Roubaix, I spoke French fluently. Strangely enough, though
I went to the Town Hall with the rest and supplied true particulars of
my age and nationality, papers were issued to me as a matter of course,
and never during the whole two years and more of my presence in their
midst did the enemy molest me in any way.
[Sidenote: Control cards for men of military age.]
The only incident which throws any light on this curious immunity
occurred about the middle of 1915. Like all other men of military age, I
was required to present myself once a month at a public hall, in order
to have my control card, which was divided into squares for the months
of the year, marked in the proper space with an official stamp "Kontrol,
July," or "August," or whatever the month might be. We were summoned for
this process by groups, first those from 17 to 25, then those from 25 to
35, and so on. Hundreds of young fellows would gather in a room, and one
by one, as their names were called, would take their cards to be stamped
by a noncommissioned officer sitting at a table on the far side of the
room. On the occasion I have in mind, the noncommissioned officer said
to me, "You are French, aren't you?" I answered, "No." "Are you
Belgian?" "No," again. "You are Dutch, then?" A third time I replied
"No."
At this stage an officer who had been sauntering up and down the room
smoking a cigarette came to the table, took up my card, and turning to
the man behind the table, remarked, "It's all right. He's an American."
I did not trouble to enlighten him. That is probably why I enjoyed
comparative liberty.
[Sidenote: The German policy of enslavement.]
Enslavement is part of the deliberate policy of the Germans in France.
It began by the taking of hostages at the very outset of their
possession of Roubaix. A number of the leading men in the civic and
business life of the town were marked out and compelled to attend by
turns at the Town Hall, to be shot on the spot at the least sign of
revolt among the townspeople.
[Sidenote: Treatment of girl mill operatives who refuse to work.]
Not a few of the mill owners were ordered to weave cloth for the
invaders, and on their refusal were sent to Germany and held to ransom.
Many of the mill operatives, quite young girls, were directed to sew
sandbags for the German trenches. They, too, refused, but the Germans
had their own ways of dealing with what they regarded as juvenile
obstinacy. They dragged the girls to a disused cinema hall, and kept
them there without food or water until their will was broken.
Barbarity reached its climax in the so-called "deportations." They were
just slave raids, brutal and undisguised.
[Sidenote: The deportations or slave raids.]
[Sidenote: Taken to an unknown fate.]
The procedure was this: The town was divided into districts. At 3
o'clock in the morning a cordon of troops would be drawn round a
district--the Prussian Guard and especially, I believe, the Sixty-ninth
Regiment, played a great part in this diabolical crime--and officers and
noncommissioned officers would knock at every door until the household
was roused. A handbill, about octavo size, was handed in, and the
officer passed on to the next house. The handbill contained printed
orders that every member of the household must rise and dress
immediately, pack up a couple of blankets, a change of linen, a pair of
stout boots, a spoon and fork, and a few other small articles, and be
ready for the second visit in half an hour. When the officer returned,
the family were marshaled before him, and he picked out those whom he
wanted with a curt "You will come," "And you," "And you." Without even
time for leave-taking, the selected victims were paraded in the street
and marched to a mill on the outskirts of the town. There they were
imprisoned for three days, without any means of communication with
friends or relatives, all herded together indiscriminately and given but
the barest modicum of food. Then, like so many cattle, they were sent
away to an unknown fate.
[Sidenote: Girls put to farm labor.]
Months afterward some of them came back, emaciated and utterly worn out,
ragged and verminous, broken in all but spirit. I spoke with numbers of
the men. They had been told by the Germans, they said, that they were
going to work on the land. They found that only the women and girls were
put to farm labor.
[Sidenote: Men do construction work in Ardennes.]
[Sidenote: Very little food.]
[Sidenote: No complaints permitted.]
The men were taken to the French Ardennes and compelled to mend roads,
man sawmills and forges, build masonry, and toil at other manual tasks.
Rough hutments formed their barracks. They were under constant guard
both there and at their work, and they were marched under escort from
the huts to work and from work to the huts. For food each man was given
a two-pound loaf of German bread every five days, a little boiled rice,
and a pint of coffee a day. At 8 o'clock in the morning, after a
breakfast consisting of a slice of bread and a cup of coffee, they went
to work. At 4 o'clock in the afternoon they returned for the night and
took their second meal--dinner, tea, and supper all in one. Often they
were buffeted and generally ill-used by their taskmasters. If they fell
ill, cold water, internally or externally, was the invariable remedy.
Once a commission came to see them at work, but they had been warned
beforehand that any man who complained of his treatment would suffer for
it. One of them was bold enough to protest to the visitors against a
particularly flagrant case of ill-usage. That man disappeared a few days
later.
[Sidenote: The Belgian frontier is closed.]
Long before this the food problem had become acute in Roubaix.
Simultaneously with the establishment of the system of personal control
over the inhabitants the Germans closed the frontier between France and
Belgium and forbade us to approach within half a mile of the border
line. The immediate effect of this isolation was to reduce to an
insignificant trickle the copious stream of foodstuffs which until then
poured in from Belgium--not the starving Belgium of fiction, but the
well supplied Belgium of fact.
[Sidenote: Fabulous prices for meat.]
Butchers and bakers and provision dealers had to shut their shops, and
the town became almost wholly dependent on supplies brought in by the
American Relief Commission. Fresh meat was soon unobtainable, except by
those few people who could afford to pay fabulous prices for joints
smuggled across the frontier. Months ago meat cost 32 francs a kilogram
(about 13 shillings a pound) and an egg cost 1 franc 25 (a shilling).
Obviously such things were beyond the reach of the bulk of the people,
and had it not been for the efforts of the Relief Commission we should
all have starved.
[Sidenote: Foodstuffs supplied by the Relief Commission.]
The commission opened a food depot, a local committee issued tickets for
the various articles, and rich and poor alike had to wait their turn at
the depot to procure the allotted rations. The chief foodstuffs supplied
were: Rice, flaked maize, bacon, lard, coffee, bread, condensed milk
(occasionally), haricot beans, lentils, and a very small allowance of
sugar. Potatoes could not be bought at any price.
[Sidenote: The Germans intercept mine food.]
Unfortunately, though I regret that I should have to record it, there is
evidence that by some means or other the German Army contrived to
intercept for itself a part of the food sent by the American Commission.
One who had good reason to know told me that more than once trainloads
which, according to a notification sent to him, had left Brussels for
Roubaix failed to arrive. I know also that analysis of the bread showed
that in some cases German rye flour, including 30 per cent of sawdust,
had been substituted for the white American flour, producing an
indigestible putty-like substance which brought illness and death to
many. Indeed, the mortality from this cause was so heavy at one period
that all the grave diggers in the town could not keep pace with it.
[Sidenote: Germans eager to buy food.]
One could easily understand how great must have been the temptation to
the Germans to tap for themselves the food which friends abroad had sent
for their victims. It is a significant fact that soldiers in Roubaix
were eager to buy rice from those who had obtained it at the depot at
four francs (3s 4d) the pound in order, as they said, "to send it home."
I shall describe later how utterly different were the conditions in
Belgium as I saw them.
Meagre as were the food supplies for the civilians in Roubaix, those
issued to the German soldiers toward the end of my stay were little
better.