TO BELGIUM
I had now camped long enough among the splendid officers of Duke
Albrecht’s army, and began to long for fresh adventures. General von
Seckendorff passed through Vouziers daily, and had courteously asked
me just to tell him when I wanted to accompany him back to Sedan. But
he always travelled northward at a late hour, and it so happened that
one fine morning I suddenly felt inclined to start off. I went round
and took a few groups at the railway station, such as French prisoners
at work, a few doctors and nurses, an artillery transport train and
a company of railway reserves. The station commander, Lieut.-Col.
Böhlau, accompanied me. At first I thought I should like to take a
military train to Sedan, but abandoned this plan on discovering that
the next train would not start for several hours. The Colonel then
made another suggestion. Since no officer’s car was leaving during
the day I might accompany one of the large motor-wagons which carry
the field post to the postal station at Sedan. An excellent idea! It
was sure to be interesting to see how the field post was managed. The
mail was not starting for a little while, and I even had time to lunch
with my old set: von Behr, von Eichstedt and von Tschammer. I thanked
these gentlemen, took leave with the customary _auf Wiedersehen_ and
hurried away. Two young artillery lieutenants, Müller and Fuchs, had
also been allowed to make use of the mail car. They had been so long
under incessant fire that they needed a rest. One of them had been in
many hard fights and wore his Iron Cross. They were both jolly and
pleasant, and we were all three seated, with none too much room to
spare, behind the mail-bags, which otherwise filled the entire vehicle
up to the roof. We thus had a view to the rear over and on each side
of an orderly standing on the platform. What was happening on the road
ahead of us we could not see, but I had by now become familiar with its
varied life. So off we went, rattling and jolting, towards Sedan.
[Illustration: FRENCH PRISONERS WORKING AT THE RAILWAY STATION AT
VOUZIERS]
[Illustration: ARMS AND KNAPSACKS OF DEAD AND WOUNDED--VOUZIERS]
These wondrous bags, what tales did they not have to tell of the
life at the front! One almost seemed to hear the old refrain: “_Lieb
Vaterland, magst ruhig sein!_” How often had I not seen the soldiers
sitting over their letters home--at the Cuirassier barracks in Vouziers
at tables rigged up with planks and trestles, in streets and yards,
using the mudguards of the cars or baggage-wagon cases as desks, or
in subterranean caves behind the trenches, where they lay on their
stomachs and wrote with their note-books as backing for the paper. If
one were to take out a mail-bag haphazard and make it into a big, thick
volume, and then read this volume from cover to cover, one could not
fail to be impressed with the merry and cheerful outlook of the German
soldiers, their faith in victory and their national vigour. One would
look in vain for a single word, a single suggestion of complaint over
long marches, excessive burdens, intolerable discipline, unnecessary
drill at odd moments in between the fighting, insufficient or bad
food. One would find that those who talk of marches, say that had they
been double as long they would yet have managed them. As to weight of
equipment, it is simply not mentioned. Discipline! If anybody mentioned
it, he would say something like this: “Thank goodness we have officers
who know what they want and take out of us what we can give, who punish
if there is anything to be punished and who dare maintain that absolute
discipline amongst the troops without which no army can win.” “These
qualities,” they would add, “are possessed by our officers, and that is
why we obey them, love them, trust them blindly, and gladly follow them
into the fire.” Germans understand that silk gloves are out of place in
a military education. They demand from their officers that inflexible,
iron severity which is necessary for the proper moulding of an army
into a whole, into an ever-ready instrument, and they do not permit
anti-military agitation to foment that passive resistance against the
leaders which is often discernible elsewhere. The German knows his
power. He knows that it is the military discipline which pervades every
fibre of the country’s body that has given them their strength. But
they are not slaves, they are masters primarily of their own will and
of their own actions.
Does anyone think that this imaginary volume would contain a single
word of fussy and squeamish complaints about food? No, one would
read nothing but humorous and almost affectionate jests about the
_Erbsenkanone_ (“pea-shooter”), the field kitchen, which is always
there at the right moment when the soldier’s belly is empty. Doubtless
there are many who have not touched food for forty-eight hours, if they
have been lying under heavy fire in a trench. But to complain would
never occur to them. They would only say what a wonderful sensation it
was to get the hot pea-soup with its lumps of fat into their stomachs.
Besides, they would probably have forgotten all about their misfortune
by the time they wrote.
[Illustration: A FIELD-KITCHEN OR “ERBSENKANONE” (“PEA-SHOOTER”)]
This is the way they talk in their letters. And probably they write
about the shell fire and the bayonet charges as if they were part of
the routine of daily life. Every letter in the big book would contain
affectionate but never sentimental greetings to father and mother,
to wife and children, to sweethearts and sisters. So we were in
excellent company, Müller, Fuchs and I, as we sat there and shook and
jolted among the mail-bags on the twenty-eight mile journey to Sedan.
That mail wagon carried a few days’ war history, disintegrated into
atoms. I could not help time and again casting a glance at the bags
and wondering what they had to say. I thought of the many farewell
greetings they contained from soldiers for whom the fatal bullet had
been cast and who would write no more field postcards, of the greetings
from the wounded who would soon lose consciousness for ever, to be
carried out to the great common grave in the local churchyard.
My companions had much to tell about these things. But everything moved
so swiftly and the wagon rattled so noisily that I forgot the greater
part as fresh impressions came crowding into my mind. One of my new
friends, after some fight was over, had gone up to a French soldier who
lay on the ground with a nasty wound in the abdomen. He had stopped
to see if he could help the wounded man before the ambulance arrived.
The Frenchman wept bitterly and pulled out of his breast pocket the
portrait of his sweetheart, which he showed the German officer. After
he had looked at it eagerly for a couple of minutes, it slipped out
of his benumbed hand and he sank back and died. Frenchmen also know
how to die, and there are no words to express their bravery and heroic
contempt of death.
For three weeks Müller and Fuchs had shared the rough and the smooth
together in their entrenched artillery position. At first they had
suffered great hardships from rain and wet, but once they and their
men had had time to dig themselves in properly, like moles under the
earth, all had been well--especially when they had found some small
stoves in neighbouring villages and installed them in their burrows.
They soon became so accustomed to the shell fire that they slept like
logs even when the air was filled with thunder and the impact caused
the ground to tremble around them--that is, of course, if it was their
turn to sleep! On Sunday, the 4th October, the day we heard Pastor
Marguth preach, divine service had been held in the church at Cernay.
Müller and Fuchs were there, and they told me that it was one of the
most moving scenes they had ever witnessed. Too much light was not
allowed, and on the altar alone a couple of candles were burning. But
it was full moon and clear weather. The moonlight streamed in through
the windows and illumined the aisle and pillars and the weather-beaten
faces of the soldiers who had come in from their trenches or transport
wagons. Meanwhile French shells were falling in the village, and
there was a horrible rending and roaring from the explosions and the
collapsing houses. But the chaplain did not permit himself to be
disturbed. He seemed not to notice the pandemonium outside. He spoke
without a quiver in his voice of the peace in God and the duty to one’s
country. The soldiers listened immovable, and when the strains of the
last hymn had died away and the lights had been put out they dispersed
down the little streets and alleys, weirdly illumined by the moonlight
and the fire from the burning houses.
Thus the journey to Sedan was greatly shortened, and for my part I
should have liked it to be double as long. But the mail van pulled
up at the railway station, and there I had to say good-bye to my two
interesting companions. On the platform stood Major von Plato at his
post, jolly and cheerful as usual.
“Tell me, my dear Major, is there any decent means of getting to Namur
without having to encumber an officer’s car?”
“There are no direct trains to Namur, but in twenty minutes there will
be an ambulance train which can take you some distance into Belgium,
and once you get so far, no doubt you can get along some other way. Of
course, you must first have permission from the surgeon in charge of
the train.”
Whilst I was waiting for the doctor I went to have a look at a troop
train--an infantry battalion, or something like it, crowded into
third-class carriages. These travellers had come from Königsberg, and
had swept East Prussia clear of the enemy, so they said, and now they
were on the way to Verdun. Every compartment, with normally six seats,
now also carried six men. But instead of sitting they were lying down,
two on the floor, two on the seats, and two in the luggage racks. They
were in the most exuberant spirits, and the din was fearful.
Presently a messenger came to tell me that my surgeon had arrived and I
went to see him. Judge of my surprise when I found it was Chief Staff
Surgeon Dr. Fröhlich, whom I had met at Sedan and Vouziers!
“May I come by your train?” I asked.
“Why, of course, to Breslau, if you like.”
“But, of course, you are going through Belgium?”
“Yes, as far as Libramont, then we turn eastward and in four days we
are at Breslau.”
Dr. Fröhlich had now been travelling for some time between that city
and Vouziers with wounded officers and men. Now he had upwards of three
hundred patients on board, whom he was to drop here and there on the
way until only a few remained to the journey’s end, where they would be
taken charge of at some home hospital. That done, he would return as
rapidly as possible with an empty hospital train to fetch a fresh batch
of wounded. He is therefore constantly on the move with his staff of
doctors and assistants, and he was very pleased to have company for a
while.
Time is up and the train starts with military punctuality, after we
have taken a hearty farewell of the cheery Major von Plato. Presently
we settled down in Dr. Fröhlich’s compartment, which almost resembled a
little study. One wall was taken up by a sofa, the other by a couple of
chairs, and a writing-table decorated with flowers in empty cartridge
cases and still fresh, having been sent from the doctor’s home. Other
tokens of his domestic ties were portraits of his wife and children and
of a son and nephew fighting at Rheims. Here also lay an open diary,
in which the doctor notes the incidents of his good work and enters
such observations and discoveries as he may make in the course of
his practice, together with various suggestions for improvements in
hygienic arrangements in the field, which may be found of use in future
wars--if any!
We speed past a wrecked road bridge and a railway bridge which has
been treated in the same way, and watch an airman ascending from earth
in elegant circles, his wings tinted red by the evening sky. Here is
another troop train--there is seemingly no end to all these soldiers.
Wherever one goes and whatever time it is, everywhere one finds myriads
of soldiers as in a gigantic ant-heap. By degrees twilight descends
upon us, and the pretty scenery through which we pass evades my gaze.
It is now dark. We sit still and chat whilst the train speeds on and
the hours pass. The hours are short in Dr. Fröhlich’s company, but
the train is interminably long--it consists of forty-two coaches. At
Carignan, where the line swings round towards the Belgian frontier,
and where the ground begins to rise, the train is divided into
two sections, each drawn by two locomotives. We felt a tremendous
pulling and tugging in our half. We are now on the “war road,” whose
acquaintance I had made on the journey to Sedan. The wounded, dreaming
about battlefields, bombs, and shells, must think that they have
suddenly been overtaken by an earthquake, to put a finishing touch to
their adventures. The cartridge cases with their flowers came hopping
down from the table and we ourselves get a terrible shaking. But we are
just as cheerful, and there are no pauses in our talk except when Dr.
Fröhlich goes his round among the wounded.
After a plain but excellent supper we retired to rest. At Bertrix the
two halves of the train were put together once more, and the poor
wounded soldiers are brought a stage nearer to the homeland.
It was four o’clock when Dr. Fröhlich came in to call me, and a moment
later we stopped at Libramont. Here our ways parted. But before saying
good-bye we paid a visit to the kindly, cheerful sisters, who had
steaming coffee ready at the station for the many travellers. Then we
asked the station commander whether he could help me to get to Namur.
“No, not the whole way, but as far as Jemelle. Once you get there, you
will have no difficulty in finding somebody to take you the rest of the
distance.”
“Good; when does the train start?”
“Now, immediately. But it isn’t exactly a train, only four coupled
locomotives ordered from Jemelle.”
I have indulged in many modes of locomotion, from the camels of
Takla-makan to the rickshaws of Kioto, but it is a solemn fact that I
had never yet travelled on a locomotive, and I therefore accepted the
offer with the greatest alacrity. So I took farewell of the excellent
Dr. Fröhlich, and was conducted with my baggage by a lantern-bearing
Landsturm man across a few railway tracks to the four locomotives. The
leading engine, which I climbed on to, had the tender in front. I thus
had a clear view of the line and of the landscape which by degrees
unfolded itself before me. But it was a cold and draughty journey.
A thin coating of hoar-frost lay over the ground and its whiteness
was emphasised by the moon, which cold and solemn floated above the
tormented earth.
The driver and fireman were sturdily built fellows, deliberate and
imperturbable. Their sooty faces betrayed no emotion, no anxiety, but
they kept their eyes glued on to the line ahead, ready to stop the
engine on the slightest suspicion. They were not exactly overworked,
for lately their duties had been reduced considerably; but a little
while previously they assured me that they had had to work forty-eight
hours without a break. The firing of _franctireurs_ along the line had
ceased. They could now travel with a certain sense of security, but had
nevertheless to be careful.
The night is calm and still. We meet long military trains, looking
weird and fantastic in the unaccustomed perspective, and the stations,
at Hatrival, at Merwart, are encumbered with endless goods trains,
now empty. Day gradually begins to dawn. Gardens and woods begin to
take shape, and the leafy crowns of trees become more plainly outlined
against the sky and the white ground. We pass over a wrecked bridge
which has been repaired by German _pioniers_. Here comes Grupont with
its arched bridge. It grows lighter and lighter. I begin to long for
the sun and its warmth. The landscape is exceedingly pretty, with its
wavy undulations and its little coppices and meadows dotted about. The
driver offers me a little three-legged stool, and as the fireman opens
the furnace door to throw in a few shovelfuls of coal, he smiles at me
when I take the opportunity of warming my hands a moment.
Forrières! Now the sun rises like a glittering golden ball, and gives
colour to trees, fields and pastures, houses, gardens, and Landsturm
men, now able once more to turn down their coat-collars.
We arrive at Jemelle and step down. I thank my friends for their
excellent company, but a tip is not accepted. On the platform comes
a N.C.O. and asks what my business is. I show him my _Ausweis_, and
he asks me to wait in the station commandant’s office until his
arrival--it is now only 6.30 a.m. Inside a friendly stove is burning,
in front of which I settle in an arm-chair and soon fall asleep.
After a while Captain Haaf, the commandant, comes marching in and
rouses me, mildly surprised at finding a total stranger in possession
of his own office. But we are soon friends.
“When is there a train to Namur?” I ask.
“At 11.30 we have a supply train going through, and if you like to
travel by that I shall be pleased to put on a passenger coach.”
“Good, that will suit me excellently.” The Captain then took me to a
Belgian restaurant close by, where a couple of breezy and talkative
women soon served up a first-class breakfast. The Captain told me that
they did not yet feel quite safe from the attentions of _franctireurs_.
A few days previously a rifle bullet had been aimed at the
station-house in Jemelle. The culprit was seized and court-martialled,
but his fate had not yet been settled. In the neighbourhood of Houyet
a band of Frenchmen had recently attacked some Germans, and a punitive
expedition of 130 men had been sent out after them.
Time is now up and the train steams away through the hilly country, its
little villages and its cattle grazing in the pastures. As yet there is
nothing to remind one of war but the Landsturm men on guard along the
line, the railway troops at work here and there, and the troop trains
halting at the stations. At Marloie one was standing in the station
and we pulled up alongside of it. One of the carriages was taken up by
Red Cross nurses, and as chance would have it, my window stopped right
opposite one of theirs. A couple of the nurses were propped up against
each other fast asleep, another couple were reading, the rest were
knitting. One of them looked out through the open window. She looked
very sweet in her light dress and the Red Cross on the arm.
“Where have you come from and where are you off to?” I asked.
“We come from Berlin and are going to Sedan,” she answered.
“But surely there are hardly any wounded left in Sedan now; most of
them have been taken into Germany.”
“Yes, we have heard that is so, but no doubt plenty more will be coming
down from the front. Where have you come from yourself?”
“From the country south of Sedan.”
“Are you a German?”
“No, I am a Swede.” In the end I could not help introducing myself to
the young lady and her companions. Conversation was soon in full swing
and we had just got to know each other nicely when my train slowly
glided out of the station. I just had time to wish them success in
their charitable work, and in reply was greeted with friendly wavings
from their window--and so that little idyll came to an end.
On the way between Aye and Hogne some men belonging to a fatigue party
made signs that they wanted to come on board. The train slowed down
so that they could jump on to the step and get a free ride with their
picks, spades, and rifles.
To the left the country falls away in enormous flat wooded waves which
die away on the horizon in a haze of dark green, light green, greenish
blue, and bluish grey. Our train takes us through little woods and
shrubs, coppices, clumps of fir and oak, and tunnels blasted through
the solid rock. Now and then we come across a crowd of Belgian workmen
at work on the embankment. The little signal-boxes along the line are
guarded by Landsturm soldiers in pickets of ten to twelve men.
The little town of Ciney boasts an unusually handsome station building,
round which things seem livelier than elsewhere. Sometimes we meet
colossal empty trains with straw in the goods-trucks and benches
piled up topsy-turvy. One wonders whether they have been to carry
reinforcements to the besieging army outside Antwerp. Often one sees
attractive and well-kept kitchen gardens at the stations or between
the fine-looking stone houses in the villages. At some distance from
the railway we sight at length the fort of Naninnes, flying the German
flag. Soon after we cross the Meuse by a _Kriegs-Eisenbahnbrücke_
(war railway bridge), where we get a view of the remains of the old
permanent bridges which were blown up during the first days of the war,
and presently we enter the delightful and prettily situated little town
of Namur.
In order to get the information I needed, I applied to a Captain,
a tall man with snow-white hair and beard, no less a person than
professor emeritus Doctor B. Lepsius, who in spite of his age has gone
out to the war. He is a great friend of Professor Svante Arrhenius, and
looked after me like a father during my short stay in Namur.
[Illustration: A DOCTOR, PROF. CAPT. LEPSIUS AND A FEW SŒURS DE LA
PROVIDENCE IN THE CONVENT GROUNDS]
After my baggage had been stowed away at an hotel by the railway
station, we paid a short visit to the Governor, General von Hirschberg,
who had no objection to letting me see one of the forts of the
fortress. As companion I had, besides Professor Lepsius, Major Hans
Friederich, of the General Staff.
We drove to the northern fortifications and soon arrived at Fort
Marchovelette, now called fort No. 1. Namur is, or rather was,
surrounded by nine forts. In the Belgian days they were known by
definite names, now they are merely numbered. The first impression
that one gets of No. 1 is that the destruction has been less complete
than in the Port Arthur fort where General Kondratenko was killed
during the Japanese siege in 1904. I had an opportunity to visit that
“eagle’s nest” exactly six years ago. It looked like a huge pile of
broken stones and rubbish. But on closer examination of No. 1, one
is astounded at the appalling effect of the fire from the German
heavy artillery. The fort is triangular with one apex towards the
north-east. Its glacis is covered with barbed wire-netting stretched
out to a height of one metre between the iron posts driven vertically
into the clay-bound soil. The netting is close, and covers a belt of
thirty or forty metres. Inside is the moat, commanded by the fire from
galleries in the counterscarp. At length we reach the heart of the
fort with casemates for the garrison, armoured turrets for artillery,
searchlights and fire control, and an infantry rampart like a belt
round the grey cupolas on the summit.
Ten to fifteen metres away, outside the barbed-wire zone, I noticed in
the ground the crater of a 42-cm. shell, 30 metres in circumference
and about 8 metres deep. On the almost vertical concrete walls of
the scarp and counterscarp I saw the marks of shells of more normal
dimensions--streaky scars radiating from the point of impact.
Splinters of shells of various dimensions were still lying about. One
queer-looking fragment of a 42-cm. shell was so heavy that I had to
exert myself to as much as shift it. But then one of these “coal-boxes”
weighs when whole hundreds of kilos. A little splinter which I
took away with me showed that the metal had been expanded to about
one-fourth of its original thickness.
Everything regarding the giant mortars is kept secret. But this much I
was told, that their range is enormous. The vertex of the trajectory
is several kilometres above ground. The ranging is done with great
precision, but of course one must be prepared for not hitting the
target with the first shot or two. “Misses” are, however, very rare.
The most exhaustive calculations and observations are made before the
shots are fired. Observers are posted at suitable points as near the
objective as possible; they are in communication with the gunners and
report the point of impact. When a 42-cm. shell comes pounding down
from a height of several kilometres, there is nothing built by human
hands which can resist it.
In fort No. 1 we saw a good instance of the effect of these gigantic
projectiles. One shot had struck the annular armour round the cupola
of the largest armoured turret, had passed through the half-metre of
metal as if it had been butter and had then continued through a bed of
concrete five metres thick. This shell was also provided with a _Zünder
mit Verzögerung_.[21] If the fuse is set for retarded ignition the
explosion only takes place a couple of seconds after the impact. If one
cannot make sure that the projectile has first penetrated the material
to be destroyed, its effect, at least on armoured concrete, would not
be very disastrous.
[21] Fuse timed for retarded ignition.
The engineers from Krupp’s were now busy repairing the forts both at
Namur and Liège, and a large number of men were engaged in this work.
By repairing the occupied fortresses the Germans are strengthening
their strategical position and can release considerable forces for the
actual fighting line.
The effect of the heavy artillery on the defending garrison will be
realised when it is stated that at one fort seventy per cent of the
complement were killed, whilst the remaining thirty per cent were
severely injured. As we all know, the brave Commander of Liège, General
Leman, was wounded in this way. In another fort were found forty
bodies, which showed no trace of injury. It was evident that these men
had succumbed to the gases of the projectiles or had been choked by the
concrete dust which is said to whirl up in the most appalling manner
and to penetrate everywhere. The air pressure had also flung many
soldiers against the walls of the casemates, and they were subsequently
found with broken skulls.
One of the lessons which may be said to have been learnt in the present
war is that even the most modern fortifications equipped with the
most superb armoured turrets are useless when opposed by artillery of
the calibre of the great German mortars. The circumstance that the
projectile does not burst until it has penetrated into or even through
the concrete bed gives rise to a havoc which challenges all attempt
at description. Everything within the “bomb-proof arch” thus struck
is rent asunder and destroyed without leaving a trace. The projectile
first operates from above downward, and then from below upward through
the explosion.
The 42-cm. mortars are brought up to their emplacements on rails laid
down especially for their conveyance.
From fort No. 1 we returned to the town, which is at its prettiest at
the point where the Sambre falls into the Meuse. South of the Sambre
an exceedingly picturesque road winds its way up to the crest of the
Citadelle height, on the slope of which the Stadion is also situated.
Of the magnificent Grand Hotel Namur-Citadelle, which looked down from
the top of the hill, there is nothing left but a skeleton of iron
girders and brick walls. The proprietor was a German, and the Belgians
suspected that on the approach of the Germans from the north-east he
signalled to his countrymen. The building was therefore burnt down.
But the view is left, and it is nothing short of superb, especially up
the Meuse valley with its innumerable villas and châteaux lining the
banks in the direction of Dinant, which are, or rather were, inhabited
by wealthy Belgians, for most of them have gone away on account of the
German occupation.
The town of Namur itself has only suffered slightly from the ravages
of war. The Hôtel de Ville has become a ruin, like many houses in its
neighbourhood. But it is estimated that only about twenty houses in
all have been wrecked by shell fire. The Germans have been blamed for
the destruction they have wrought among human habitations, churches,
public buildings and objects of artistic and historic value. Such
losses are, of course, exceedingly regrettable. But neither attacker
nor defender can pay any attention to such considerations when the
fate of his country is at stake. If it is noticed by an armed force
advancing to seize a place serving as a _point d’appui_ to the enemy,
that the church tower is being used as an observation post, the church
tower is shot down. When the Belgians suspected that Marche-les-Dames,
the château of the Duchess of Ahrenberg, near Namur, famous for its
priceless art treasures, was used for signalling purposes, they burnt
it down. When it is a question of rendering the position of an invading
army more difficult or of delaying its advance or cutting its lines
of communication, the defender seems to shun no material sacrifices,
even though he himself is the principal sufferer. Of the numberless
bridges blown up by the Belgians in their own country, all in order
to delay their enemy, there must be many which were of no importance
whatever to the Germans. By so doing, the defenders brought upon
themselves a treble loss, namely, the loss of the bridge itself, the
cost of removal of débris, and the building of a new bridge after the
end of the war--all this caused by a single blasting charge. But the
defending army, which is always inferior, is nevertheless compelled,
in a far greater measure than the attacking army, to effect wholesale
destruction, more especially of buildings of architectural or historic
value, whilst as often as not it lies in the interest of the attacker
to preserve them. The blowing up of bridges is in itself a vandalism,
but is fully justified if it is thought that strategic advantages
can be obtained thereby. The destruction wrought by the Germans in
their advance has partly been involuntary, and has partly had its
cause in the conduct of the civilian population. But the Germans have
never destroyed simply for the love of destruction. Assertions to the
contrary are intended to create false notions, and it may be assumed
with tolerable certainty that if the enemy armies had the opportunity
of penetrating into Germany, they would, to say the least, bring about
as much destruction as has been wrought in the countries now occupied
by German armies.
During the first period after the capture of Namur all windows facing
the street had to be kept alight after dark, whilst the streets
themselves were not lighted. The consequence was that people out
of doors were not clearly discernible, but that if anyone were to
fire from a window, he would be discovered immediately. At first all
doors facing the street had to be left unlocked. But after a time the
inhabitants, out of fear of the soldiers, asked to be allowed to close
their doors, and this request was granted. At the time of my visit,
that is to say on October 8th, Namur wore a very animated aspect. As
late as half-past seven in the evening most shops were still open and
the streets were well filled. Even the young ladies, who at first
did not dare to go out, began to show themselves on the pavements.
But the prohibition against being out of doors after 9 p.m. without
special permit was still in force. On account of the many uniforms,
military motor-cars and transport trains Namur looked more like a
German garrison town than anything else. And yet this appearance was
belied by the many white flags floating from the windows, especially in
the principal streets, which indicated that the inhabitants of those
particular houses had agreed to accept the new order of things. When
one travels through Belgium one must harden one’s heart, for at every
step one is reminded of the misfortune of having lost one’s liberty in
one’s own country. And one thinks with horror of how it would feel to
be placed in the same situation. A moral judgment is now being passed
over Europe. Woe to the people which has not in time put its house in
order, or which relies on paper treaties and declarations when force
sits in the judgment seat and when none but the strong and wakeful
inspire respect in _all_ directions.
In the evening there was some sort of festivity at the officers’ mess
of the 87th Landwehr Regiment. It was attended by the officers of the
Higher Command who happened to be in the town. I also had the honour to
be present, and spent a couple of very agreeable hours between Generals
von Hirschberg and Rathgen.
On the 9th October I made an excursion by motor-car to the magnificent
and wealthy convent of Champion, founded in 1834 and now the home of
180 _Sœurs de la Providence_. Its great hall was gorgeously decorated
in white and gold, and had stained-glass windows. Many wounded warriors
had been housed here, and we paused more especially before two Belgian
soldiers from fort No. 1, who had been badly burnt on face and hands,
but were now on the road to recovery. After some considerable
hesitation I was at last allowed to photograph a few of the charming
and hospitable nuns in the convent garden.
We thereupon looked in for a while at the really magnificent _Hôpital
Militaire_ with its one hundred and fifty wards and rooms, its seven
hundred wounded, its twenty-three doctors and one hundred and forty
male and female ‘sick’ attendants. Right from the beginning there
have only been eighteen cases of tetanus, most of them attended with
fatal results. All possible nationalities were represented amongst
the patients. But from England there was only one patient, a handsome
youth, badly wounded by several bullets. He seemed to be in a deep
sleep and his face was pale and drawn with suffering. A couple of
days before he had lost a chum, and one of the nurses told us that he
had felt dreadfully lonely after his friend’s bed had stood empty.
He seemed indeed terribly alone amongst all these strangers. I could
not take my eyes off him, and it was touching to see how he lay there
waiting--for what, I wonder? He seemed to lie there as the innocent
incarnation of a policy which is doomed to die, and for which he
himself had laid down his life.
A band was beating an old Hessian tattoo in the square between the
cathedral and the Government building when at half-past two, after
dining with the Governor, I stepped into the car which he had kindly
placed at my disposal. I was going to Brussels _via_ Waterloo, and was
to arrive before dusk. Of Major Friederich I obtained an excellent
map of Belgium, and after saying good-bye to the venerable but still
youthful Professor Lepsius and my other new friends, I soon left
the town behind me. I had with me a chauffeur and an orderly, both
armed with carbines. The car was a little grey monster with flag and
streamer. As regards speed, there seemed to be no limits to its powers.
We drove, nay, we flew, at over fifty English miles an hour when
travelling at our fastest. I wondered whether the object was to make
the aim of _franctireurs_ more difficult by presenting them with a more
swiftly moving target.
Villages, gardens and fields tore past, and the pace was too great for
careful observations and notes. But it is a delightful and exhilarating
sensation; one becomes intoxicated with the sensation of speed, and
any feeling of danger vanishes with the desire to drive on faster, and
still faster!
On the left we first pass fort No. 4, the repairs to which have now
been practically completed. The high road is in excellent condition,
and there is a little traffic in the shady avenues. Life seems slowly
to be returning to its old grooves. In front of farms and houses by the
roadside we notice German soldiers engaged in more or less laborious
but always friendly and often jocular conversation with Belgian women,
or playing with their children after the fashion of uncles. The
country is flat, with hardly noticeable undulations. In the fields,
which make a pleasing picture with the farm hands busily at work, the
crop has been piled up in enormous cylindrical stacks crowned with
shallow conical hoods intended to keep the water off the corn. At
Gembloux--with its memories of 1815--a Red Cross flag almost fills the
entire street, with the armed Landsturm men keeping watch below in
their shining helmets.
The stone houses in the villages look very substantial, but are far
less picturesque and pretty than our own red cottages with the dark
pine forest as background. At Wawre a house has been wrecked here and
there. By the roadside is the lonely grave of a dead soldier. In front
of it, on the road, an old woman is driving a barrow drawn by a dog.
And so one impression succeeds the other.
After Overyssche the road turns off sharp to the left and runs through
La Hulpe and a number of other villages, until at last we reach the
famous battlefield of Belle Alliance.[22] This spot is one of the
sights for those who visit Brussels. In peace time there are on an
average 450 visitors a day to the great hall erected outside Waterloo,
in which a gigantic panorama, measuring 110 metres in circumference,
gives an excellent idea of one of the most dramatic moments of the
battle. Attention is especially directed to the group representing
Marshal Ney’s furious onslaught with the French Guards against
Wellington’s artillery and infantry positions south-west of Mont St.
Jean. The foreground is strewn with soldiers and horses lying dead
amongst the grass and lumber, and the whole has been carried out in
natural size, with detached life-size figures gradually merging with
bewilderingly telling effect into the painted canvas and its excellent
perspective. Some way off one sees Napoleon on his white charger,
attended by his Staff, and in the far distance the old Hussar General
Blücher with his Prussians, who on that day saved England from
perdition. One sees the burning villages around, the roads with their
avenues of trees and the shady groves at Ohain and Château de Goumont.
[22] The German name for the battle of Waterloo (Translator).
But reality itself is after all more interesting. I walk up to the
crest of the hill, some sixty metres high, on which stands a lion
of colossal dimensions, unveiled ten years after the battle by the
Netherlands Government. The lion is cast from captured French guns,
and its base merely bears the inscription: XVIII June MDCCCXV. It is
not the conquered Titan who is symbolised by this pompous lion, but
the united powers who made an end of his career. The wounded bronze
eagle on his piece of rock, recently put up by the French in memory of
the battle, illustrates in a dignified manner the glorious but unhappy
struggle of Napoleon and the French arms. But the lion remains at his
post and looks out defiantly upon the historic landscape.
Around us we now see the actual panorama with its shaded roads, its
villages and church towers, its gardens and fields. Some of these are
green--where clover or sugar-beet is grown; others blend in brown and
grey--where the crops have been brought in and the plough has furrowed
the soil afresh, and harvesters, ploughmen, grazing cattle, and other
rural scenes form a picture which seems to speak only of peace and
tranquillity.
Dusk is descending over the tormented, blood-drenched earth and the
wind sweeps dismally over fields and hills where the echo of the
ancient guns and the rattle of harness and stirrups, crossed lances,
and doughty sword-thrusts died away just on a hundred years ago. A
feeling akin to reverence steals over the wanderer on this battlefield,
still marked with the monuments put up by those who wished to honour
their dead. Everything recalls his name, that great name still living
as vivid and as fresh as ever, and undimmed by the dark nights which
for wellnigh a hundred years have clothed in their shadows the country
between Mont St. Jean and Planchenois.
Now German soldiers are on guard at the battlefield of Waterloo and
its historic monuments. Once more the Prussians have taken charge of
the spot where the bravery and loyalty of their ancestors under the
iron will of Blücher broke Napoleon’s strength and gave the British
general a victory which he alone would never have been able to achieve.
Wellington’s country followed the policy which had been its lodestar
ever since the time of William of Orange. All that can jeopardise
England’s supremacy on the high seas must be crushed--if possible
by foreign arms. When the powers of the Continent have weakened one
another with war, England has stepped in and reaped the harvest.
Her position in the world has been gained more through felicitous
combinations of circumstances than through any efforts and sacrifices
of her own. It is only when Belgium has seemed near to falling into the
hands of some strong continental power that England has felt obliged to
put her hand to the plough, for her own skin has then been threatened.
But the intervention has then been effected under the cloak of the plea
of defending the minor states against the enemy’s violation of the
rights of nations. At the beginning of the nineteenth century France
was too great and powerful for England. Its Emperor must therefore be
crushed for all time. Hence the vanquished monarch was placed in a cage
on a crag in the ocean, and his gaoler obeyed but too promptly the
orders he received from London. Now the centenary is to be celebrated
with the crushing of Germany. But the success of a hundred years ago is
not being repeated.
Hush, is not that the thunder of the guns of Antwerp? We listen. No,
all is still. My chauffeurs, still with the poor captive lion, cannot
understand what has happened. Daily for the past two weeks they assure
me they have heard the guns, and now all is suddenly still. We do not
even see the glare of burning houses northward. Perhaps it is the wind
and fog. My companions have been told that during the previous night
1500 shells had been flung into the unhappy city, where the destruction
must have been appalling. However, I say to myself, even the German
artillery will need some time to take a place like Antwerp, which,
according to English and French sources, is the world’s strongest
fortress and absolutely impregnable.
We jumped into the car once more and quickly covered the remaining
eleven English miles to Brussels. The road is paved with stone, and
seems one long street lined with continuous rows of houses. The
electric tramways are running and entire trains pass us filled with
Germans and Belgians. Villages and suburbs here follow one another
in endless succession, and the traffic becomes livelier. Grey-clad
sentries with fixed bayonets are everywhere to be seen, but all is
quiet and peaceful. Yet we almost feel the covert hatred in the glances
directed on our military car and its German flag. We meet proud women
with heads held high and faces set, old ladies in mourning and frowning
elderly men with fists clenched in their pockets.
The shadows of night were falling when we reached the capital of the
German Governor-General of Belgium. But the streets were well lighted,
as were the windows of shops and restaurants. There were plenty of
people about, but we saw no vehicles which were not occupied by German
officers and men.
We drive up to the corner of _rue de la Loi_, where we are stopped by
a double sentry. I show my paper, they step aside, and we drive up to
the Palace of Ministers. “Where does the Governor-General live?” I ask
my chauffeur, and he answers that we shall be there in a minute. He
stops outside the _Ministère des Sciences et des Arts_. In the gateway
stands a strong guard. I am taken across a courtyard and into a long
corridor with German name-plates on the doors. On one I see the name
of Lieutenant Massebus, and it is him I want to see, for he is one of
the adjutants. He told me that the Governor-General had spent the day
outside the beleaguered city of Antwerp, but that he was certain to
return by nine, if I would renew my visit then.
I accordingly proceeded to the _Palace Hotel_, the 400 rooms of which
were nearly all occupied by German officers. At the appointed time
I was back in the vestibule leading to the reception rooms of the
Governor-General. Several officers were waiting there. Amongst them I
made the acquaintance of a man whose name I had already heard, namely,
Captain Dreger, engineer at Krupp’s and joint designer of the 42-cm.
mortars. This subject was, of course, taboo, but instead, Captain
Dreger told me that he had arrived in Bombay in October, 1908, a week
after I had left that city, and that he had literally pursued me via
Colombo, Penang, Singapore, Hongkong, and Shanghai--with hardly a
week’s interval.
“Who is in there just now?” I asked.
“It is Frau Martha Koch, of Aleppo,” an adjutant tells me; “she and
her husband and children have lived there for thirty years. The
Governor-General is an old friend of the family from the time he lived
in Turkey. Now she has come to offer her services for the Red Cross.”
An officer who had spent the day with the Governor-General shook
his head as he said: “It’s a wonder that we still have him with us.
Every day he exposes himself to the most appalling risks. The other
day a shell came sweeping along a few metres over his head, but he
only smiled.” “Yes,” declared another officer, “he seems to delight in
danger. He always picks out the most dangerous spots--one is almost
tempted to think that he wants to be shot. It would be a nice ending
to a brilliant career. But whilst the bullets avoid him, they are not
so kind to those in his vicinity. He even goes as far as to walk up
to the firing line, where he lies down and jokes with the soldiers.
Of course, his presence is in the highest degree encouraging to them.
One day, accompanied by a soldier, he walked up to one of the enemy’s
trenches, and although it had been quiet for some time there was no
knowing whether it was empty. Fortunately it proved to be so. When
his Excellency returned, we reproached him for his daring. ‘But there
was no one there,’ he answered innocently. ‘No, but it might quite
well have been occupied by enemy soldiers.’ ‘True, but in that case
I should probably not have gone.’” Just as we were standing there
and talking about him, who should come out into the vestibule but
his Excellency himself, who kindly asked me to walk in. I knew him
from the _Deutsch-asiatische Gesellschaft_ in Berlin, where under his
chairmanship I had lectured about my last journey. He, too, greeted me
as an old friend, and wanted me to begin with to meet Frau Koch.
The Governor-General of Belgium, Field-marshal General Baron Colmar von
der Goltz, formerly in Turkish service, and now once more sent by the
Emperor to the Sultan’s side, is a man of seventy-one years of age, but
he retains his vigour and energy undiminished. He was now thoroughly in
his element. He is a powerfully built man, thick-set, and rather below
the medium height; he looks out from under his spectacles in a friendly
and jovial way and seems to me more like a professor than a general. As
a matter of fact he is a very learned man, who has published many books
on military history which are ranked very high, especially about the
Franco-German war of 1870-71, in which he took part.
When we were alone, he told me the great news of the fall of Antwerp
on the same day and of the entry of the German troops at three o’clock
in the afternoon. So it was not to be wondered at that we had heard no
sound of cannonading from Waterloo. I seized the opportunity of asking
at once whether I should be permitted to visit Antwerp, the sooner the
better, as it might be interesting as well as instructive to know what
a large city which had just capitulated looked like. Why, of course I
might! I should be allowed to see practically all I wanted, and if I
liked I could return the next morning directly after seven o’clock and
would then be told whether I could proceed at once without undue risk.
After we had discussed the situation a few minutes longer I went home.
It was then ten o’clock, German time, which, by the way, had been
made the standard time after the occupation and was an hour ahead of
Belgian time. At nine o’clock all shops and restaurants were closed
and the streets were silent and still. Across the square outside the
Palace Hotel and _Gare du Nord_ I was not allowed to go, in fact anyone
attempting to do so was politely stopped by a Belgian policeman or even
Belgian civilians. The reason was probably that the square must be kept
free for military cars, of which there were always a great number lined
up outside those buildings.
The tramways cease running at ten o’clock. After that the city is empty
and deserted, its population having gone to bed.