SHADOWED AT LIÉGE
At Liége I felt the German espionage system. This city became world
famous in a week's time when the Hun was pounding at the gates. It was
the first the world knew of the war. The place was fearfully "strafed."
It was Sunday afternoon when I arrived. Before I could get off the
train, or rather out of the depot, I had to let the German soldiers
search me, and they went through my clothes with a marvelous
thoroughness. When I went to a hotel and was eating my supper I found
there two Germans in the dining room, one of whom was a soldier and one
a railroad conductor, talking together. I will not mention the name of
the conductor because if this was reported of him it might mean his
execution. After a few minutes the soldier went away.
I went on with my supper but before I had finished a violent pounding
sounded on the door. The proprietor, a Belgian, started to answer it,
while his wife peeped out and saw that two burly German officers were
there. She became excited and rushed back, seized my grip, turned out
the light in the dining room, and bundled me off upstairs with my heart
pounding like a steam engine.
I did not know what was up.
Now, either the German Secret Service had shadowed me all the way from
Brussels, or perhaps every step of the way since I entered the country,
or else that soldier had gone out and reported me. Those officers
demanded of the proprietor if there was an American in his house and if
so what he was doing there. I don't know what answer he gave them, but
after a while they went away.
I then had the most enlightening and frank talk with that civilian
German conductor that I have ever had with a German since this war
began. The Belgian hotel proprietor had known him for several months as
a guest, and told me that I could trust the man.
In the conversation the German said, "War is a terrible thing. It is no
good for common men like me."
"Why not?" I asked him.
"Why," said he, "I have a wife and two children at home, and if I go out
and get killed what becomes of them?"
I said, "Won't the Kaiser take care of them?"
"Humph," he grunted, _Der Kaiser!_ And he put his fingers in his ears to
indicate that the Kaiser would be deaf to their appeals. He continued,
_Der Krieg ist gut für die oberen Zehn-Tausend, ja, ja! aber es ist
nicht gut für diejenigen welche kämpfen_. "War is good for the upper ten
thousand, yes, yes! but it is no good for the ones who do the fighting."
I said, "You wouldn't dare to say these things when that soldier was
here, or in front of military men, would you?"
_Nein, natürlich nicht. Aber sie sind ein guter Kamerad._ "No, naturally
not. But you are a good comrade."
This little talk in which he said that kings and kaisers all ought to be
dethroned, gave me an idea that there must be multitudes of men who feel
the same, but because their souls are not their own, dare not give voice
to it. I told the man that Americans could not understand how the
Germans could enter the country and do the frightful things that they
have done to the unoffending Belgians. I said we had thousands of kind
and peaceable Germans in America, and many of them were among our best
citizens. "Ah," said he, "it is the discipline. These German soldiers
were once peaceable and kind citizens also, having families like
myself, but the discipline of the army has made them warlike and
unmerciful. After one year in the Kaiser's army they still have some
heart left, after two years less, after three or four years of that
discipline they have no heart at all."
Another German, a soldier, then came in and my German friend shut up
like a clam. So did I.
I went out next morning and saw the ashes and ruins into which the
Germans had plunged the city and I had a talk with one Belgian man who
had been made an atheist by the crushing experience. As I spoke with
him, hearing his terrible tale, and seeing from his shop window dozens
of homes which were burned down, and beautiful buildings deliberately
desecrated, my faith in God did not diminish, but my confidence in my
own former pacifism did, and I felt a growing faith in militancy when
dealing with the German who respects nothing on earth but force. I was
day by day realizing that he must be dealt with on his own grounds and
with his own weapons. It was hard for me to come to this position but
the cold and cruel facts were forcing it upon me.