[Sidenote: American indignation at deportations.]
"The President [during my visit to America in 1916] impressed upon me
his great interest in the Belgians deported to Germany. The action
of Germany in thus carrying a great part of the male population
of Belgium into virtual slavery had roused great indignation in
America. As the revered Cardinal Farley said to me a few days before
my departure, 'You have to go back to the times of the Medes and
the Persians to find a like example of a whole people carried into
bondage.'
"Mr. Grew had made representations about this to the Chancellor and,
on my return, I immediately took up the question.
[Sidenote: Gerard not permitted to visit deported Belgians.]
"I was informed that it was a military measure, that Ludendorf had
feared that the British would break through and overrun Belgium and
that the military did not propose to have a hostile population at
their backs who might cut the rail lines of communication, telephones
and telegraphs, and that for this reason the deportation had been
decided on. I was, however, told I would be given permission to visit
these Belgians. The passes, nevertheless, which alone made such
visiting possible were not delivered until a few days before I left
Germany.
[Sidenote: Some of them call on him.]
"Several of these Belgians who were put to work in Berlin managed to
get away and come to see me. They gave me a harrowing account of how
they had been seized in Belgium and made to work in Germany at making
munitions to be used probably against their own friends.
"I said to the Chancellor, 'There are Belgians employed in making
shells contrary to all rules of war and the Hague Conventions.' He
said, 'I do not believe it.' I said, 'My automobile is at the door. I
can take you, in four minutes, to where thirty Belgians are working on
the manufacture of shells.' But he did not find time to go.
"Americans must understand that the Germans will stop at nothing to
win this war, and that the only thing they respect is force." James W.
Gerard, _My Four Years in Germany_, 1917, pp. 351-52.
A similar point of view is expressed in an article entitled "Vae
Victis" from the Hungarian newspaper _Nepszawa_ of Budapest (quoted in
K.G. Ossiannilsson, _Militarism at Work in Belgium and Germany_, 1917,
pp. 53-54).