RESULTS OF "FRIGHTFULNESS"
When Viellaur had given me my passport to Liége he had told me orally to
come back by the same route I went. But it did not say so in the paper
itself, and I ignored his instructions. I took an extended trip south in
Belgium and I learned on this instructive but sad journey, just how the
Germans hound the Belgian people and make life miserable for them. If
the Belgians show any resentment whatever, they are arrested as
seditious persons and usually deported to Germany to work in the fields
or ammunition factories. I saw many instances where German officers or
soldiers entered the homes of people and commanded the owners to stand
back while they searched the place, and if mayhap, they found a letter
from some friend in the house which had any complaints or any sentiment
against the German invasion, the people were arrested and their
existence made even more unhappy.
On this tour I also experienced something of the hard conditions from
scarcity of food, and in the home of Madame Beauvoit, in southern
Belgium, the mother of one of my parishioners in the States, I ate black
bread the like of which I have never eaten before. I delivered a note to
her from her daughter and stayed at her house overnight, but I could
stay no longer as I was conscious that I was eating up her living. She
told me at supper that they were only allowed ten ounces per day of that
bread, bad as it was. I could hardly push the next swallow down my
throat, for I was eating the life of that woman. I also observed the
marvelous working of Mr. Hoover's food commission under the management
of Mr. Whitlock and Hugh Gibson, and it was a wonderful organization and
certainly an inspiring sight.
But during those days I looked upon scenes and witnessed spectacles
which break the heart, and I had opportunities of talking with Belgian
people in their homes, where I stayed for meals, or in which I slept,
and they told me heart-rending tales of the experiences they had gone
through.
For hours sometimes I would talk with them, and the information which I
thus obtained was most enlightening. They often handed me their cards
also, sometimes requesting me to learn if possible the whereabouts of
their relatives, for thousands of them had fled, and been scattered
afar. This journey gave me an insight into the motives of the German
military men. One day I stopped at the little town of Dinant. There I
saw a place of devastation so complete that even the ruins of
volcano-destroyed Pompeii, could not compare with it. An aged man who
was walking by, stopped and began to talk to me. I felt so sad on seeing
the awful picture that I could hardly talk. In fact, as I stepped off
the train I had burst into sobs. My ears, however, were alert and I
greedily drank in his awful tale. The man pointed out a wall of solid
rock which, was riddled with bullet holes. I stuck my finger into one of
these holes and worked out a piece of stone, covered with blood from
some poor man's heart. I still have it. He explained that more than one
hundred innocent Belgians had been lined up against that wall and shot
to death for no offense whatever. He also said that in some places where
the Belgian people resented the invasion of their homes they were
dragged out and lined up, and every third man was shot down to set an
example to the people. The captain would count, "One--two--three!" and
the firing squad would shoot a man. Then again "One--two--three,
shoot!" "One--two--three, shoot!"
Out on the public square of Dinant, more than four hundred of the
civilians of the town were herded together, having been dragged from
their homes or seized upon the streets. They were huddled in that square
and ropes were stretched around the company. Then the German machine gun
captain standing a score of yards away, on the word of command, opened
up that death-dealing device which shoots more than eight hundred times
a minute, and mowed down that crowd of people on the public square as
though it had been cattle in a slaughter house. Nor did the German
Government itself deny these things. In fact it admitted innocent
slaughter, in some cases. But it sought to justify it as a means to its
military goal. The German _White Book_ itself speaks of the measures
taken at Dinant. It says that the German soldiers were repairing a
bridge which the Belgians had destroyed to prevent the Germans from
coming into their town. But the enemy finally took the place and as they
worked on the bridge (so the German version reads) some Belgians fired
upon them from the roofs of the houses in the vicinity. Whereupon the
soldiers caught all the Belgian people they could find upon the street,
lined them up against the wall, and announced that if there was any
further firing, these people would all be killed. The report says,
"Still the firing continued, and then we shot the innocent people. We
had to do it, otherwise our words would have been but an idle threat. We
were compelled to do these things in order to accomplish our military
goal, which must be achieved at all costs."
And with this ideal in view, they raged through the land leaving it
little more than a pile of blackened brick and ashes soaked in blood. I
went to Louvain, to Mons, and Charleroi, to Namur and Haecht and
Aerschot in like manner, and in these places also I saw and heard such
heart-breaking things. These acts were the result of the policy of
"frightfulness" which the Germans had been taught thoroughly. After
sufficient experience with this sort of thing and being sickened with it
all, I finally turned my face back toward the north.