_Monday_—Notices have now been posted up in all the Belgian villages
that, since the Belgian civilians, both men and women, have shot at the
Germans and even killed their wounded, anyone who offers the slightest
resistance will be at once shot down. The house to house search for
arms is rigorously prosecuted. A man in the village is shot to-day.
He was working in the fields and ran away instead of facing round and
throwing up his arms when challenged.
In one village, so the Germans themselves tell me, they have shot
twenty-nine men out of thirty-four. They assert that their soldiers
were fired on as they entered the street.
The Kaiserliche regiment is encamped at Malempré, a mile away. They
have taken an ox and one or two sheep and roasted them whole. They have
also forced the peasants to dig up their own fields of potatoes for
the soldiers and stood over them to ensure the order being carried out
at once. The Germans give a bit of paper, in exchange, a governmental
I.O.U. redeemable at the end of the war ... if there is an end and the
peasants are alive to see it!
“All will be paid,” says an orderly complacently, as he triumphantly
carries off our last fresh eggs. But what is the use of German money or
governmental I.O.U.’s when one cannot reach the town for fresh supplies.
“All will be paid.” What a mockery! Stay. They are right. All will
be paid. With more than money. With blood and treachery and women’s
tears....
I sat up all last night as usual. Paraffin and candles have long
given out, but luckily there was a thrice-blessed moon. In the queer
half-light, the sentries looked like so many demons pursued by their
own shadows. Soldiers were sleeping all about the hard cobblestone
street as though lying quietly in their beds at home. Only the
Cuirassiers under my window kept up a constant noise. Their horses,
too, were stamping and moving continually in the stables as though
anxious to get away.
This morning I ask one of the more kindly-disposed soldiers if he is
not afraid of death.
“I must do my duty,” he says simply. “But I feel the cord tightening
round my neck each day.”
He looks pale and pinched, as though disease, not rifle fire, would be
his end.
“I was out scouting in the woods last night, Fräulein,” he tells me
later. “It is so cold, so eerie, and then one only gets a couple of
hours’ sleep when the dawn comes. There are horrible things in the
woods, Fräulein—shapes and monstrosities. The pine dust powders under
the horse’s feet and the green boughs go “swish” in one’s face just
as one turns on the electric torch, thinking to have spotted a rascally
Frenchman——”
“—And you did?” I asked breathlessly.
He rubs a hand over his convict-cropped head and looks modestly
triumphant.
“Two, Fräulein. Both dead. Straight, clean shots. Couldn’t miss.”
I start up, trying to recall to an elusive memory my amateurish
knowledge of first aid.
The Cuirassier smiles. “Really dead, Fräulein. We could only find one.
I buried him very near the top because the ground was hard. Here is his
number.”
He compares it with his metal one, slung from his neck by a cord. A
brown leather purse is attached by the same means.
“Wer spärrt in der zeit,
Hat etwas in der noth”
(Who saves in time,
Has something in adversity [need])
is written on it in German characters.
Mlles Irma, Louisa and Rosa are all sitting round agape with interest.
“It’s quite like being at home,” says the blond giant smiling at us
complacently.
“This is the first time I have seen a German soldier unarmed,” I remark
sarcastically.
“What need when one is among friends,” says the German with emphasis.
Madame Job suddenly begins to grind the coffee-mill in the kitchen.
The peaceful Cuirassier instantly applies the now familiar revolver to
my forehead. The noise makes his expression change from mild melancholy
to fierce anger. He is capable of any villainy since he thinks we have
arranged an ambush of the French and that he is at last betrayed.
A speedy explanation frees me from my uncomfortable position. More
Uhlans ride up. At their head is a scholarly looking officer with a
pointed grey beard.
“The Prince of Meiningen,” whispers a soldier in a soft round cap, who
is passing by the door.