The First Days in Brussels
Restarting almost immediately, I crossed to Ostend. On the way there
were the usual reassuring but unrecordable sights of the sentinel
cruisers and busy submarines that made these frequent passages
seem, after later weeks in the war countries, like an escape into a
comfortable atmosphere of home.
At Ostend a party of efficient St. John Ambulance nurses with whom
I had travelled were received with delightful enthusiasm, and free
lemonade, by the Belgian soldiers.
Brussels proved a contrast after Paris. The panic days, which took a
milder form here in spite of, or because of, the greater proximity of
danger, had passed. The townsfolk were absolutely calm, the shops open,
the life, except for the absence of means of traffic, undisturbed.
Only at intervals, as the chance of the German occupation increased,
and the news diminished, there would come over the city for a few
hours, one of those electric restless waves which we got to know as
signs of approaching danger. They arose from no definite news. The
crowds repeated no rumours. It was merely an uneasy feeling in the air.
Something had happened far off, and like the unseen fall of a heavy
stone in water the ripple reached and spread over the city, that yet
had no definite information to disturb it.
Brussels, Monday.
In addition to the well-deserved enthusiasm with which Belgian heroism
in arms has been greeted throughout civilised Europe, something must be
said of the success with which the extraordinary demands have been met
by the departments of the civil administration of Belgium.
During the last few days I have been in contact with a variety of
administrative offices in the capitals of three of the belligerent
Powers. In one country it seems as yet unrecognised that exceptional
conditions demand exceptional organisation. In another there is
frank confusion, due to the withdrawal of the majority of the
efficient administrative staff to the war and the concentration of
the remainder solely on military requirements. Only in Brussels has
it been recognised in time that the civil life of a country, properly
controlled, is as important to success as any section of the work of
mobilisation, and that it is not sufficient to proclaim a state of war
and leave everything to an already over-worked military organisation.
Some genius (we know now it was Burgomaster Max) must have been behind
the details of city administration here, for in their way they have
been as successful in maintaining public confidence as the personality
of the mountaineer King has been in inspiring magnificent enthusiasm
in his army. The streets are kept orderly, retail trade is almost
normal, railway traffic has been rarely interfered with by the immense
task of mobilisation; the complications of travellers and passports
are simplified and dealt with efficiently and considerately; the
Press control is effective but courteous; the hospitals are admirably
organised; and the crowds are kept from the stations, on the arrival of
wounded or prisoners.
All civil organisations are made use of, and even the Boy Scouts are
doing excellent work for all branches, without the error--increasing
across the border--of considering themselves semi-combatants. The
result is that though the crisis, after the first few days, is
being met in all the capitals with gravity and quiet resolution,
Brussels--the most immediately threatened--remains a model of civic
life under strict but considerate administration.
The moral, if any, is that even in actual war nations are only the
weaker for having to send the whole of their manhood to the front. To
convert the whole community, with its varied forces of activity, into a
single military machine, is to make the machine itself less effective.
Brussels, Tuesday.
I have been given to-day every facility to inspect the excellent
organisation for the care of the wounded. A noticeable feature at the
central office is the extent to which amateur help is made use of in
organising, and the efficiency and open mind with which unexpected
contingencies are met and suggestions considered.
(Later a growing amount of the unqualified "Red Cross" help was found
to be open to the same objections that were made to it as the result of
our own experience in the Boer War.)
If experience in Paris and Brussels can be turned to account, the
British authorities should pay attention to the organisation of
private motor-cars lent to the force, to make them of real service. A
large proportion are apt to race about without purpose or serviceable
return--the usual difficulty with a crowd of enthusiastic would-be
helpers.
The prisoners at Bruges confirm the impression that the commissariat
arrangements of the advance guard of the invading German columns was
very defective, owing to the unexpected resistance. The nature of the
wounds bears out the reports of inexpert German shooting. A great
number of the Belgian soldiers brought back from the front are wounded
below the knee, and a smaller proportion in the scalp.
The Bruges authorities are most considerate in allowing books and
games to be sent to the prisoners of war, and letters to be sent and
received. (We were permitted to send down dozens of packs of cards
etc., as a distraction for the prisoners.)
The population remains completely calm, even at a time when the next
few days may decide their fate. The passage of a German aeroplane
yesterday aroused only momentary curiosity. (Every day at about five
o'clock the aeroplanes circled over the town. We got to look for them.
Almost every night also a bright planet, the "Brussels star" was
watched by interested crowds, who took it for a "Zeppelin.")
I witnessed to-day the feeding of some 10,000 children of men at the
front. The distribution was excellently organised. Later I saw the
distribution of vegetables to the necessitous.
These days of anxious waiting are taken with quiet resolution and much
good humour.
Brussels, Wednesday.
The gallantry of the Belgian resistance has astonished the world. It
has surprised the Belgians themselves. It would be a mistake to look
for its source only in the reconstitution of the Army, a matter of the
last few years; or to find in it a justification of war, or a plea for
national military service as the regenerator of racial vigour.
The war is only the opportunity for the expression of a new Belgian
democratic spirit. The new service conditions have been merely one of
the agencies by which the idea of the individual right to a greater
share in self-government, and the idea of the necessary condition for
such government, national independence, have been disseminated.
If the Belgians are fighting heroically, it is because they are
fighting for an independence which means not simply a national flag
and a coloured space on the map, but individual liberty. They are
defending, each man for himself and his neighbour, a responsible share
in an increasingly popular Government. The inspiration of the national
resistance has been the consciousness in each man of his share of
liberty already gained. This democratic spirit has given life and vivid
purpose to the military machine.
For the time all difference of party is sunk in securing the primary
condition of liberty, racial independence, and the deliverance from the
threat of that greatest enemy of freedom and individual enterprise,
the military autocracy of Prussia. For the time, that can be the only
conscious idea. But the liberal and more intellectual elements must
be rejoicing in the realisation that the splendid effect of the new
spirit is already justifying the democratic movement by which a share
of popular responsibility has been gained in the past. They may well
be looking forward to a time when the people will be considered to
have earned by their heroism in arms a yet greater part in their own
government.
The association of M. Vandervelde with the ministry has done much to
identify the new spirit of democracy with the central idea of national
existence. It is symbolical of the fact that the cause of Belgium is
the cause of her people. An ardent advocate of peace and international
friendship, he is known to have been one of the most resolutely
convinced that, in this crisis of her fate, Belgium could be content
with no formal protest, that she must fight for her independence to
the last man. (It remains for history to emphasise the measure of
political wisdom that the King showed at this crisis, in strengthening
the influence of his own resolution, never to allow a free passage
to the Germans, by the inclusion in the councils of the nation, of a
personality politically antagonistic, but inspired by a patriotism and
intellectual power second to none.)
In a country hitherto supposed to have been exceptionally under the
influence of clerical domination it is significant to note the very
small part that the Church has taken in the time of great emotional
strain. In few of the organisations, civil and military, preparatory
and corrective, established to meet the crisis, has the Church taken
the lead.
Even the Boy Scouts, as a small instance, who loom large in the
administrative life of Brussels for the time being, and who have
hitherto been divided into hostile camps by Church and lay divisions,
have sunk their differences, and are absorbed into the non-sectarian
and civil machinery. It will be interesting to see what effect the loss
of grip of the Church at this crucial moment may have upon her position
when the new Belgian national spirit, confirmed by trial, can turn its
energies again to problems of government and personal liberty.
The renaissance, or rather reassertion, is not confined to men. Women
are taking a prominent part, and that not only in replacing men in
subordinate work. It has not been elsewhere stated, but I have been
assured by several of the wounded that much of the power of resistance
in the Liége forts is due to the women of the town of Liége, who twice
a day risk their lives in visiting the forts, bringing provisions and
new heart.
With such wives and mothers there is little reason to fear that the new
spirit will be limited to one generation, or can be accounted for as
merely the reaction from a war fever. The war will but harden it into
manhood.