Although time passed somewhat less dully than later, the incidents
that, during the winter and summer of 1915, relieved our otherwise
monotonous days were of such distressing character that they only
deepened the gloom. One by one our British friends were carried off
to Rühleben, while their wives were left behind without sufficient
means—in some cases absolutely destitute, since they could receive
nothing from without, and were consequently worse off than the
really impoverished Belgians, for whom charity provided. For months
at a stretch, this monotony of misery was broken by nothing more
encouraging than bad news from the front, and the tragic events at
the _Tir National_, where citizens were shot for patriotic deeds,
seldom graver than that of Miss Cavell, or the brave Belgian girl
Gabrielle Petit, twenty-one years of age. She, however, was given a
chance of having her punishment commuted to imprisonment, but declined
this favour which had been denied the Englishwoman. The murder of
Miss Cavell caused a pervading mood of mourning that seemed unlikely
ever to diminish, even in those who did not know her personally. That
crime, so pitilessly carried out, in secrecy and under cover of false
promises, was perhaps most appalling to those in the vicinity whose
hopes were stimulated by misleading assurances, until the post-mortem
announcement proved them vain! Although a British subject has referred
to the deed as rather a “blunder” than a crime,—she being proven
guilty of having assisted young men across the frontier,—the fact that
other women, not British, found guilty of the same humane, although
forbidden, acts, were yet spared the extreme punishment reserved for
spies and the worst of treason, takes all logic from the argument
of this apparently prejudiced Irishman. Edith Cavell’s martyrdom
impressed us in Brussels, as it must always impress history, not only
as shortsighted stupidity—the very determination, secrecy, and haste
with which it was perpetrated contradicts such interpretation—but
rather as a deliberate and atrocious act of vengeance toward a hated
nation!
But other tragedies followed so quickly that this one gradually became
lost in the mass of appalling incidents related by relatives of those
who suffered, or widely announced in German _affiches_ in order to
strike fresh terror to the hearts of a sorrowing and helpless people.
Yet hope lived on; despite the prevailing misery, each gleam of
good news that reached us from the front was magnified to a great
victory for the Allies, and twenty-four hours sufficed to develop
the conviction that a glorious and triumphant peace was about to be
proclaimed.
Secret organizations in Belgium occasionally brought us a ray
of encouragement, despite the twenty thousand German civilians
endeavouring to discover and destroy these sources of information
opposed to what was allowed to appear in our papers. But, by dint
of passing from mouth to mouth, the news became so distorted or
exaggerated that one scarcely knew what to believe.
We all had maps spread over our walls, on which every mile that the
British and French advanced was marked with pins bearing little flags
of the nations. For how many months—_years_, indeed—we pored over
that line as it crept closer and closer to St. Quentin, Cambrai,
and other points considered the keys to a rapid and overwhelming
victory! I cannot recall them without painful recollection of our many
disappointments.
In the spring of 1918 we put those maps out of sight, and ceased
reading the communiqués vouchsafed us by a German press.
The most trying element of all, in regard to the front, was the
_authentic_ information we received by word of mouth, as early as
December 1916, of the taking of Courtrai, St. Quentin, etc., by the
Allied armies. The stirring account grew as it passed from one excited
recounter to another. It was originally obtained, as stated above,
from some unknown but trustworthy source. But later on we came to
believe that these stories were, in great part, spread by the Germans
in order to weaken and destroy what faith and hope still survived in
the country. I heard soldiers, even at this time, express very gloomy
views as to their nation’s prospects in the war. Once in a tram, just
before the last temporarily successful onslaught of the Germans at
Verdun, I heard one, who pretended he was drunk and had possibly been
taught the words in French, cry out hysterically: “Our cause is lost!
_Nous sommes fichus! Nous sommes fichus!_”
For some reason beyond the comprehension of civil minds the occupying
Government appeared bent upon destroying every vestige of hope
in Belgian hearts. Invariably on the eve of a German victory,
exhilarating rumours of great Allied successes were set forth from
unknown sources awakening joy in the prison city which often verged on
an outburst of dangerous enthusiasm. Then, as invariably, the blazing
blue _affiche_ appeared, announcing an overwhelming defeat of the
Allies in the very section where they were understood to have been
successful.
The subtle trickery of such tactics might in time have attained its
object; certainly there could be no better method of wearying and
torturing a people into losing faith. And while it did not succeed
with the better classes, it tired and broke the spirit of the
suffering poor to such an extent that, even when positive proof of
successes reached us, they would not believe; for they had come to the
conviction that the Germans were invincible and would never give up an
inch of Belgium.
We who had witnessed the easy and rapid advance of the enemy through
Belgium and deep into France, cut off as we were from all reliable
information, could not, during the first years, form any idea of
the vastly differing conditions affecting the Allied armies. As the
Germans, opposed only by hastily-mustered, unorganized, and infinitely
weaker forces, had swept on so quickly, we looked for like speed
from the Allies when once their strength was massed and ready. That
the enemy had had time to root himself in and fortify his positions
almost invulnerably, while England was forming an army of untrained
men, and France was preparing hers, we did not comprehend until later.
Few details reached us from the outer world, although during the
first year a London _Times_ was occasionally smuggled in. A _Times_!
No one outside can realize what that meant to us! The poor sheet,
usually more than a week old, passed surreptitiously from hand to
hand, was reduced to a flimsy rag before reaching its last reader!
Enormous prices were paid for it. The members of the Anglo-American
club paid a hundred francs for one copy which contained nothing of
importance, but was nevertheless of inestimable value to us as a
voice from friendly regions whence, week by week, we were further
cut off. But soon these rare and precious journals appeared no more;
and the apparently innocent newsvendors who shouted aloud: “_La
Belgique!_”—and whispered, when someone known to be trustworthy
passed: “_Le Teems, Monsieur?_”—no longer added the zest of dangerous
intrigue to our saunterings through the dull streets.
But tales of heroic deeds done by the Belgians afforded a certain
interest and satisfaction; tales only whispered to those who could
be trusted not to repeat them. And many were performed by the
Flemish, whom the Germans boasted they had won to their side. One
may be given to illustrate the real sentiments of these people, so
falsely represented in the German accounts. At Bruges, where the
Flemish element predominates, an old man, for many years foreman in
the unloading, etc., of canal boats, approached my friend the steel
manufacturer in that town, gruffly complained that the Allies were
making a mistake in bombarding the railroads from aeroplanes, since
the Germans were shipping their ammunition and so forth exclusively
by the canal, and asked the manufacturer if there was no means of
sending them word to this effect. The latter, not wishing to betray
himself, but meaning to attempt it, said he knew of no such means.
Whereupon the old Fleming withdrew, muttering discontentedly, with
bowed head and great bushy brows knitted over a pair of clever dark
eyes, meditating mischief.
A few hours later, German officers came in hot haste to the
manufacturer, and, in a frenzy of rage and excitement, made him
accompany them to the canal. There a great crowd had gathered about
the old foreman, who was under arrest, and threatened with death. He
appeared stupidly indifferent to the menaces and curses heaped upon
him by the infuriated Teutons, merely repeating over and over:
“I could not help it!—An accident!—I did my best!”
For some moments my friend, dazed by the reigning confusion, was
unable to understand what it was all about, until, led by an officer
to the canal bank, he saw the cause of their rage. He was so much
affected by amusement mingling with a deeper emotion that a lump rose
to his throat, and he could not speak.
The old foreman, as though by accident, had managed to let drop the
hook of his great iron crane just as a boat, carrying a vast German
war-cargo, was passing by. It caught the boat so firmly by the nose
that, in his pretended efforts to free it, he not only overturned the
bulky vessel, but dragged down his crane, which, with the boat, sank
into the canal, blocking it against all navigation for nearly five
weeks! He did this at the risk of his life, and only his able pretence
of stupidity, and the manufacturer’s representation that he was in
his dotage, won for him a term of imprisonment instead of the extreme
penalty.
The brave passage of young Belgians over the frontier to join their
army caused the barriers of our prison to be more closely guarded.
Those who still ventured to cross—and there were many even after the
deadly electric wires had been installed!—did so with scarcely a
chance for their lives. Boys as young as seventeen ran the gauntlet
of that “death-zone,” and many passed it in safety after incredible
endurance and suffering.
A Belgian woman, whose two sons made a daring attempt to pass, told us
their experience, related to her in part by one of their companions,
obliged by illness to return; and in part by the German officer who
coldly informed her of their fate.
After skulking for four days and nights under cover of a wood in
the Campine, devoid of food, save what little they carried in their
pockets, and exposed to incessant autumn rains, they at last reached a
canal lying between them and Dutch territory. Having no other means
of crossing, they plunged at night into the black water, and struck
out for the opposite shore.
The mother, not hearing of their capture, which would have been widely
published, concluded, after several days, that they had got over
safely. But one morning she was startled by the visit of a German
sub-officer who came to announce that one of her sons had been shot
while swimming the canal.
As she pretended ignorance of his intention to cross, the information
was considered sufficient punishment, especially when, several days
later, the tidings of her other son’s death in like manner was
conveyed to her by the same pitiless messenger.
This was the most tragic incident of the sort I heard first-hand at
that time; but tales as sad, or others picturing the glorious success
of such young heroes, were constantly circulating.
Later, when the electric wires and underground mines were installed,
the matter was differently managed. By a carefully-organized plan,
the boys were able to pass over in companies of twenty, thirty, and
more at a time, each one contributing his share to the large bribe by
which the sentinels were bought off.
Once, when, before this rare privilege was wholly withdrawn, my
companion was permitted to go by motor into Holland on business,
he was surprised to meet, in the little Dutch town of Nispen, a
Belgian acquaintance whom he believed to be in Brussels. He and
thirty companions had been safely conducted over the frontier the
night before! Three thousand one hundred francs, one hundred from
each member of the party, had secured them this easy passage. The
youths, now free and eager for revenge, were glad to regain liberty
at so small a price, and be able to join their colours. While he was
relating this in the street, he noticed a crowd gathered about two
German soldiers, unresistingly arrested by the Dutch police.
The young Belgian, on seeing them, uttered an exclamation: “_Mon
Dieu!_” he said. “Those are our sentinels!—the men who led us over
last night!” They hastened to the group, and the soldiers, recognizing
him, grinned and nodded in a friendly manner.
“What are you doing here?” he asked them genially, for the men were
evidently good-natured creatures, not reared in the army, whose
military sympathies were apparently no deeper than their uniforms.
“Got tired of it over there!” returned one, still smiling. “We are not
so free as you are, but we can wait for that more comfortably here
than in Belgium!”
During the summer of 1916 the inhabitants of Brussels, weary of
suffering and the “hope deferred which maketh the heart sick,” began
a rather forced effort to brighten their existence. When, after a
bitterly gloomy winter, the first peep of green became visible in the
Bois, it seemed as though a tremor of new life passed through the
city. War, with its ever-recurring calamities and disappointments,
had come to be looked on as an unalterable affliction, which must be
endured with patience until some unforeseen and unimaginable event
should bring it to an end. Confidence in early and rapid victory had
gradually given place to a less definite though stubborn belief in
final triumph; but now even this was less openly expressed. War, in
fact, became a tacitly avoided subject of conversation. The tedious
communiqués, giving only such details as the Government thought fit to
present, were no longer discussed, even by bereaved and serious folk
whose thoughts were ever at the front. We who, as yet, were spared the
crape worn by so many, began to frequent tennis and golf clubs, where,
while healthfully exercising on the courts, or “chasing a pill through
a pasture”—as the Irishman defined golf!—we tried to forget that the
air we breathed came to us over acres of death.
The Bois became alive again with children and pleasure-seeking
couples; and although there were no horses to drive or ride, boats
were launched, as of old, on the beautiful lake surrounding an island
café, which reopened its doors to serve, not the dainty repasts of
former days,—edibles were far too dear!—but tea and coffee of sorts,
while procurable, and a light home-made beer. One lump of sugar was
allowed to each cup, and no appeal or bribe could secure more. But in
a short time the place was crowded, not only by Belgians, but German
soldiers who mingled freely with them, seeking relief from the dull
routine of their days of rest.
One of the touching sights of this little island retreat was that of
these weary, battle-soiled men, to whose clothes still clung the mud
and grime of the trenches, delightedly visiting the dovecot, where,
for ten centimes, they procured grain to feed the pigeons. These
pure white birds, emblems of peace and beauty, would settle on their
hands, shoulders, and heads; and through their snowy plumage the men’s
gruesome, green-grey uniforms appeared like the thought of an evil
mind, marring the spiritual accord between God and man.
This reawakening of the people was a natural reaction—the demand
of life for its own rights. As with individuals, sorrow’s tedium
had evoked in the entire occupied country a certain helpless
resignation to circumstances that after two years’ patient endurance
and discouragement offered no promise of change. Oppression and
deprivation had become permanent elements of existence. Tragedies even
failed to impress us so deeply as of yore; incidents of heart-breaking
pathos no longer brought tears to the eyes of those who could still
dress warmly in winter, and indulge adequately, if not luxuriously,
in the high-priced food. All had made such sacrifices for the poorer
classes as each considered possible without serious menace to himself.
Many had given the last centime they could spare, others substantial
donations which they probably did not miss.
Nevertheless, evidences of distressing want increased, more especially
among those too proud to ask alms, who, before the war, had been
comfortably off.
During that summer and the following winter these once well-to-do
and industrious citizens swelled the long lines of hunger-driven,
ill-clad beings who, in rain, snow, or sunshine, stood for hours
outside soup-kitchens to obtain the loaf of bread and jug of hot broth
provided by charity. I think no visible sign of the country’s calamity
was more painfully impressive than the sight of those silent, patient
files of heterogeneous humanity, extending at certain hours along
whole blocks of the city’s streets. Chiefly were they eloquent during
the early dusk of winter, when, exposed to the blast of cold winds, to
sleety rain, or penetrating fog, refined men and women, old and young,
stood shivering side by side with the lowest inhabitants of rue Haute!
Some faces seen in those sad gatherings I shall never forget; faces
of haggard, hopeless men, whose brave efforts to live honestly had
been frustrated when success was almost attained; of wan women, whose
husbands were dead or fighting in the trenches, whose children starved
in a heatless home; old women and young, in whose eyes all human
reasoning was eclipsed by an animal hunger—old men and young with that
same anguish in their eyes, but with the hard and morose expression of
embryo criminals lurking about their down-drooping, sullenly closed
lips.
Ah, only those who lived in the midst of Belgium’s agony, who beheld a
guiltless people verily crucified as recompense for their loyalty to
honour and truth, can fully appreciate the wrong that was done them!
Only those who saw with their own eyes the callous and inhuman rage
of the invader’s earlier treatment,—when, confident of conquering
a startled world with every diabolical device of destruction which
mind could conceive, he ignored all laws, and deliberately aimed
at crushing the very heart of this little land that had done no
wrong,—only those can understand with what contempt, what _loathing_,
we who did witness it came to look upon the ruler and the chiefs of
that race whose history has been thus stained! For we saw these people
starving while Germany was seizing their crops, their horses, cows,
even the contents of dry-goods and other shops; shipping away the
coal, for need of which so many perished during the cold winters;
taking all fats, so that butter was unprocurable and milk too rare and
dear for the poor to buy. We beheld the famished mothers struggling
to keep their fading children alive on what charity could provide—so
small a portion for each of the many thousands to be cared for!—the
country’s youth stricken down with tuberculosis, and honest men driven
to thieving and crime!
Indeed, the bare sight of those lines of hunger-wan creatures,
stretching like black stains through the city, awoke depressing
conjectures as to whether man’s intelligence was, after all, of a
higher order than that of beasts, or merely the same limited capacity,
artificially burnished! Through nearly two-thirds of the civilized
world, life, beauty, and the harvests of ages were being ruthlessly
and insanely destroyed; every principle of right, every element of
higher sentiment scorned or ignored, in a senseless and hideous
conflict between men—between the most exalted of all living creatures!
Truth, the acknowledgment of a higher Power, and even kindred
sympathy—manifested even by the lowest animals—were sacrificed day
after day to an atrocious passion, costing millions of lives, billions
of wealth, and a loss in treasures, in architecture, literature, and
art such as a thousand years of labour can never replace!
What wonder that individuals did not escape the almost universal
retrogression, and that, amid a people who had so nobly stood loyal to
their ideals, dishonesty and contempt for law gradually developed from
the festering and unalleviated wounds unjustly dealt them!
Signs of this inevitable consequence of war became apparent later, not
only in Brussels, but throughout the whole of Belgium, as in Russia
and (more or less) in all the involved nations.
War! who after this can ever again insult patriotism by relating it
to the beat of drums and the roar of cannon? Every rational being
who has witnessed its dire and degrading effects, even in so small a
scene as the prison-capital of its vast tragic stage, must curse those
philosophic minds of Germany who exerted their intellects to exalt
intellect’s most horrible opponent, and sold their souls to the devil
for a vain Emperor’s praise!
On them, as much as on him they flattered, must be laid the crime of
a catastrophe that has menaced the very foundations of civilization.
Where now can be seen the benefits of that “drastic medicine for
the human race” which Treitschke informs us must always recur by
the Almighty’s will? He pretends that war is elevating because the
individual disappears before the great conception of the State, and
that to check war would be “a perversion of morality,” in that it
would abolish heroism! Is heroism more beautiful or advantageous when
_forced_ from a man on the battlefield, than when, of his own will, he
proves it in a peaceful struggle to live righteously and let others
live?
How many criminals, for selfish objects, have evinced personal
courage like that of a soldier in action?—far greater, because not
in obedience, but in opposition to power! Paid or commanded heroism
is not heroism in the true sense. Thousands upon thousands in the
peaceful walks of life have more worthily deserved glory by labour and
sacrifice for the common good than they who are driven, under command,
to slay their kind—who obey for no clearly-comprehended object,
but first and foremost to preserve themselves. There are perhaps
fifty men in five hundred, apart from the officers, whose dominant
incentive in battle is other than self-preservation; whereas in peace
one-half, if not more, of a like body of men utilize their physical
and intellectual powers for the improvement of general conditions—and
often without aiming at other recompense. The hour for lauding the
soldier above the scientist and artisan is long since past, and vast
military power, or military power of any sort, is a mockery of the
present glorious age.
Can there be any more absurd sophistry than that of pretending that
war corrects egoism? War is bred of egoism, bred of the cruellest of
all egoisms—imperial ambition! In peace the basest selfishness is less
harmful than the selfishness of international conflict. Even those
men who have amassed enormous fortunes by robbing the poor have been
of greater benefit to the world in general than if their intelligence
and force had been utilized in planning how to crush another nation.
Egoism, after all, is necessary to progress, and war is but its most
barbaric expression.
Machiavelli’s assertion that power is the keynote of all policy has
been grasped by the German war-philosophers, who flatter themselves
they see clearly when looking upon the present epoch through the eyes
of an unscrupulous fifteenth-century Italian. Machiavelli perhaps
spoke truth for his time—a truth, moreover, still real for our own;
but his word _power_ has now a different significance. Now only is the
power of reason generally developed; now only the many nations of the
world speak the same moral language; now only the masses, formerly
forced to be war-like animals, are thinking and, to a great extent,
cultured beings.
But what is the use of reiterating what every thoughtful mind has
heard crying to-day over the bleeding earth? That Reason which vast
catastrophes invariably rouse to ephemeral life soon dies in the
gathering storm-cloud of humanity’s innately savage passions! If the
race most boastful of its culture, a race which leapt so rapidly from
the confining narrowness of old-time heresies, could give birth to
the devastating horror that has reigned for nearly five years, and
threatened to thrust the world back into medieval darkness, what faith
can be placed in mere Reason? What faith can be placed in any human
argument, ideal, or belief—what faith in Man himself?—The majesty of
human intellect, before so deliberate a destruction of its own works,
is made to appear no more than a vain invention of fancy; and the
supreme creature of all knowable creation appears of no more enduring
significance than as depicted by Lamartine: “Ce pauvre insecte c’est
l’homme, qui chante quelques jours devant Dieu sa jeunesse et ses
amours, et puis se tait pour l’éternité!”