nearer its source; still pouring in, company after company, regiment
after regiment, with apparently no end in sight. We watched until after
seven, and decided that the rest would have to get in without our
assistance. On the way back a German monoplane flew over the city, and,
turning near the Hôtel de Ville, dropped something that spit fire and
sparks. Everybody in the neighbourhood let out a yell and rushed for
cover in the firm belief that it was another bomb such as was dropped in
Namur. It dropped, spitting fire until fairly near the spire of the
Hôtel de Ville, when it burst into ten or a dozen lights like a Roman
candle--evidently a signal to the troops still outside the city--perhaps
to tell them that the occupation had been peacefully accomplished. We
learned afterward that the Minister and Villalobar were riding down the
hill and the infernal machine seemed right over their car, giving them a
nice start for a moment. When I got back to the Legation, I found that
the Minister had gone with Villalobar to call on the Burgomaster and the
German General. They found the old gentleman in command at the city
hall, carrying on the government through the Bourgomaster, who has
settled down with resignation to his task. He is tremendously down in
the mouth at having to give up his beautiful Grande Place to a foreign
conqueror, but he has the good sense to see that he can do more good for
his country by staying there and trying to maintain order than by
getting out with a _beau geste_.
The first thing the General did was to excuse himself and go to take a
bath and get a shave, whereupon he reappeared and announced his
readiness to proceed to the discussion of business.
The General said that he had no intention of occupying the town
permanently or of quartering soldiers, or otherwise bothering the
inhabitants. He was sent there to keep open a way so that troops could
be poured through toward the French frontier. They expect to be several
days marching troops through, and during that time they will remain in
nominal control of the city. Judging from this, there must be a huge
army of them coming. We shall perhaps see some of them after the big
engagement, which is bound to take place soon, as they get a little
nearer the French frontier.
Brussels has not been occupied by a foreign army since Napoleon's time,
and that was before it was the capital of a free country. It has been
forty-four years since the capital of a European Power has had hostile
troops marching in triumph through its streets, and the humiliation has
been terrible. The Belgians have always had a tremendous city patriotism
and have taken more pride in their municipal achievements than any
people on earth, and it must hurt them more than it could possibly hurt
any other people. The Burgomaster, when he went out to meet General von
Jarotzky, declined to take his hand. He courteously explained that there
was no personal affront intended, but that under the circumstances he
could hardly bring himself to offer even such a purely perfunctory
manifestation of friendship. The old General, who must be a good deal of
a man, replied quietly that he entirely understood, and that under
similar circumstances he would probably do the same. The two men are on
exceedingly workable terms, but I don't believe they will exchange
photographs after the war is over. Poor Max was going to spend the night
at the Hôtel de Ville. Most of his assistants cleared out for the
night, but he could not bring himself to leave the beautiful old
building entirely in control of the enemy. He curled up and slept on the
couch in his office, just for the feeling it gave him that he was
maintaining some sort of hold on the old place.
The Minister arranged to have his telegrams accepted and transmitted
without loss of time, so we shall soon get word home that we are still
in the land of the living. We wrote out our message and sent it off
right after dinner, but Gustave brought it back, saying that the
telegraph office was closed and that he could find no one to whom he
could hand his bundle of messages. Evidently the orders for the
re-opening of the place did not get around in time for our purposes. We
shall try again the first thing in the morning, and hope that some of
the newspaper men will have succeeded in getting their stuff out in some
other way. They were around in force just after dinner and wild to get
an O.K. on their stuff, so that it could be sent. The General had said
that he wanted the Minister's O.K. on the men themselves, and that he
himself would approve their messages after having them carefully read to
him. He gave them an interview on alleged German atrocities and will
probably let them send through their stories if they play that up
properly.
After dinner I started out on my usual expedition in search of news. I
found the Foreign Office closed, and learned upon inquiry that the few
remaining men who had not gone to Antwerp were at home and would not be
around again for the present--thus we have no dealings through the
Foreign Office, but must do the best we can with the military
authorities. I went down to the Palace Hotel on the chance of picking up
a little news, but did not have much luck. The restaurant was half
filled with German officers, who were dining with great gusto. The
Belgians in the café were gathered just as far away as possible, and it
was noticeable that instead of the usual row of conversation, there was
a heavy silence brooding over the whole place.
* * * * *
_August 21, 1914._--So far as we can learn we are still as completely
cut off from the outside world as we were yesterday. The General
promised the Minister that there would be no difficulty in sending his
telegrams, either clear or in cipher, but when we came to sending them
off, it was quite another story.
The first thing this morning I made an attempt to hand them in, but
found all the telegraph offices closed. At ten o'clock I went down to
the Hôtel de Ville to see the General, who has taken over the duties of
Military Governor, and see what was the matter. He was away somewhere
and so was the Burgomaster, so I contented myself with seeing one of the
Echevins, whom I had met a number of times. He could not do anything
about it on his own responsibility, but made a careful memorandum and
said that he would take it up with the General, through the Mayor, when
they both got back. I also asked for _laisser-passers_ for everybody in
the shop, and he promised to attend to that.
By lunch time we had received no answer from General von Jarotzky, so I
got in the motor with my pocket full of telegrams and went down to the
Hôtel de Ville once more. It is a depressing sight. The Grande Place,
which is usually filled with flower venders and a mass of people coming
and going, is almost empty. At the lower end there are parked a number
of small guns; in the centre, some camp kitchens, with smoke rising from
the chimneys. The courtyard of the Hôtel de Ville itself, where so many
sovereigns have been received in state, was filled with saddle-horses
and snorting motors. The discarded uniforms of the Garde Civique were
piled high along one side, as if for a rummage sale. Beer bottles were
everywhere. In the beautiful Gothic room, hung with the battle flags of
several centuries, there are a hundred beds--a dormitory for the
officers who are not quartered at the neighbouring hotels.
The marvelous order and system which so compelled our admiration
yesterday were not in evidence. There were a lot of sentries at the door
and they took care to jab a bayonet into you and tell you that you could
not enter; but any sort of reply seemed to satisfy them, and you were
allowed to go right up to the landing, where the General had established
himself in state at a couple of huge tables. Here confusion reigned
supreme. There were staff officers in abundance, but none of them seemed
to have the slightest authority, and the old man had them all so
completely cowed that they did not dare express an opinion or ask for a
decision. The General himself is a little, tubby man, who looks as
though he might be about fifty-five; his face is red as fire when it is
not purple, and the way he rages about is enough to make Olympus
tremble. The crowd of frightened people who came to the Hôtel de Ville
for _laisser-passers_ and other papers, all found their way straight to
his office; no one was on hand to sort them out and distribute them
among the various bureaus of the civil administration. Even the staff
officers did very little to spare their chief and head off the crowd.
They would come right up to him at his table and shove a _pièce
d'identité_ under his nose, with a tremulous request for a visé; he
would turn upon them and growl, "_Bas bossible; keine Zeit; laissez mois
dranquille, nom de D----!_" He switched languages with wonderful
facility, and his cuss words were equally effective in any language that
he tried. Just as with us, everyone wanted something quite out of the
question and then insisted on arguing about the answer that they got. A
man would come up to the General and say that he wanted to get a pass to
go to Namur. The General would say impatiently that it was quite
impossible, that German troops were operating over all that territory
and that no one could be allowed to pass for several days. Then Mr. Man
would say that that was no doubt true, but that _he_ must go because he
had a wife or a family or a business or something else that he wanted to
get to. As he talked, the General would be getting redder and redder,
and when about to explode, he would spring to his feet and advance upon
his tormentor, waving his arms and roaring at him to get the ---- out of
there. Not satisfied with that, he invariably availed of the opportunity
of being on his feet to chase all the assembled crowd down the stairs
and to scream at all the officers in attendance for having allowed all
this crowd to gather. Then he would sit down and go through the same
performance from the beginning. I was there off and on for more than two
hours, and I know that in that time he did not do four minutes'
continuous, uninterrupted work. Had it not been for the poor frightened
people and the general seriousness of the situation, it would have been
screamingly funny and worth staying indefinitely to see.
I had my share of the troubles. I explained my errand to an aide-de-camp
and asked him to see that proper instructions were given for the sending
of the telegrams. He took them and went away. Then after a few minutes
he came gravely back, clicked his heels, and announced that there was no
telegraph communication with the outside world and that he did not know
when it would be reëstablished. I asked him to go back to the General,
who in the meantime had retreated to the Gothic room and had locked
himself in with a group of officers. My friend came back again, rather
red in the face, and said that he had authority to stamp my telegrams
and let them go. He put the rubber stamp on them and said I could take
them. I said that was all very well, but where could I take them, since
the telegraph offices were closed. He went off again and came back with
the word that the office in the central bureau was working for official
messages. I got into the motor with the Italian Secretary, who had a
similar task, and together we went to the central bureau. It was nailed
up tight, and the German sentries on guard at the door swore to us by
their _Ehrenwort_ that there was absolutely nothing doing.
Back we went to the Hôtel de Ville. Our friend, the aide-de-camp, had
disappeared, but we got hold of another and asked him to inform himself.
He went away and we spent a few minutes watching the General blow up
everybody in sight; when the aide-de-camp came back, he smilingly
announced that there was no way of getting the messages out on the wire;
that the best thing we could do would be to send a courier to Holland
and telegraph from there. I told him to go back and get another answer.
When he came back next time, he had the glad news that the office had
really been established in the post office and that orders had been sent
over there to have our cables received and sent at once. Away we went
again, only to find that the latest bulletin was just as good as the
others; the post office was closed up just as tight as the other office,
and the sentries turned us away with a weary explanation that there was
not a living soul inside, as though they had explained it a thousand
times since they had been on duty.
By this time the wild-goose chasing was getting a little bit monotonous,
and when we got back to the headquarters, I announced with some emphasis
to the first aide-de-camp that I could reach, that I did not care to do
any more of it; that I wanted him to get me the right information, and
do it right away, so that I should not have to go back to my chief and
report any more futile errands. He went away in some trepidation and was
gone some time. Presently the General came out himself, seething in his
best manner.
"_A qui tout ce tas de depeches?_" roars he.
"_A moi_," says I.
He then announced in a voice of thunder that they were all wrong and
that he was having them rewritten. Before I could summon enough breath
to shout him down and protest, he had gone into another room and slammed
the door. I rushed back to my trusty aide-de-camp and told him to get me
those telegrams right away; he came back with word that they would be
sent after correction. I said that under no circumstances could they
send out a word over the signature of the American Minister without his
having written it himself. He came back and said that he could not get
the cables. I started to walk into the office myself to get them, only
to bump into the General coming out with the messages in his hand. He
threw them down on a table and began telling a young officer what
corrections to make on the telegraph form itself. I protested vigorously
against any such proceeding, telling him that we should be glad to have
his views as to any errors in our message, but that he could not touch a
letter in any official message. At this stage of the game he was
summoned to the office of the Burgomaster and rushed off with a string
of oaths that would have made an Arizona cow-puncher take off his hat.
The young officer started calmly interlining the message, so I reached
over and took it away from him, with the statement that I would report
to my chief what had happened. He was all aflutter, and asked that I
remain, as the General would not be long. I could not see any use in
waiting longer, however, and made as dignified a retreat as possible
under the circumstances. There were a number of cables in the handful I
had carried around that were being sent in the interest of the German
Government and of German subjects, and I took good care to tell the
young man that while we were glad to do anything reasonable for them or
for their people, we had stood for a good deal more than they had a
right to expect, and that these cables would stay on my desk until such
time as they got ready to make a proper arrangement for our
communications. Now we shall settle down and see what happens next.
[Illustration: German officers and soldiers were always ready to oblige
by posing for the camera]
[Illustration: "Mit Gott für Kaiser und Reich." This trio had a mania
for being photographed]
[Illustration: Count Guy d'Oultremont, Adjutant of the Belgian Court.
French howitzer in the background]
[Illustration: From left to right: Colonel DuCane, Captain Ferguson, and
Colonel Fairholme]
When I got back to the Legation I found the Argentine and Brazilian
Ministers and the Mexican Chargé d'Affaires waiting to hear the news of
my mission. I was rather hot under the collar, and gave an unexpurgated
account of what had happened. By this time I was beginning to see some
of the humor in the situation, but they saw nothing but cause for rage,
and left in a fine temper.
Just to see what would happen, we then proceeded to put our cable in its
original form into cipher, and send it back to the General with a
written request that it be sent immediately to Washington. It will be
interesting to see what reply he makes. The Spanish Minister left some
telegrams with him last night to be sent, and is quite sure that they
were held up, as he has received no answers to any of them. To-morrow he
expects to put on his uniform and make a solemn official call on von
Jarotzky to demand that he be granted free communication with his
government.
During the afternoon a lot of correspondents came in and gave an amusing
account of what the General had done for them. He had received them
cordially and had given them a very pleasing interview, making an
extended statement about the alleged German atrocities. Could they send
their messages through to their papers? Certainly! Of course the General
would have to read the stories and approve the subject matter.
Naturally! The boys sat down in great enthusiasm and wrote out their
stories, giving full credit to the German army for the orderly way they
got in, the excellence of their appearance and behaviour, and the calm
that prevailed in the city. They took these messages back and let the
old chap read them. He plowed his way carefully through them and
expressed his great satisfaction at the friendly expressions of
approval. He put his O.K. on them and handed them back with the remark
that they might send them. The boys ventured to inquire how. "Oh," said
the General, "you can either send a courier with them to Holland or to
Germany and have them telegraphed from there." Whereupon he rose and,
bowing graciously, left the bunch so flabbergasted that they did not
wake up until he was gone. He was most amiable and smiling and got away
with it.
The General commanding the forces now coming through--von Arnim--got out
a proclamation to-day which was posted in the streets, warning the
inhabitants that they would be called upon for supplies and might have
troops quartered upon them, and that if they ventured upon hostile acts
they would suffer severely.
PROCLAMATION.
BRUSSELS, August 20, 1914.
German troops will pass through Brussels to-day and the following
days, and will be obliged by circumstances to call upon the city
for lodging, food, and supplies. All these requirements will be
settled for regularly through the communal authorities.
I expect the population to meet these necessities of war without
resistance, and especially that there shall be no aggression
against our troops, and that the supplies required shall be
promptly furnished.
In this case I give every guarantee for the preservation of the
city and the safety of its inhabitants.
If, however, as has unfortunately happened in other places, there
are attacks upon our troops, firing upon our soldiers, fires or
explosions of any sort, I shall be obliged to take the severest
measures.
The General Commanding the Army Corps,
SIXT VON ARNIM.
The strongest thing so far was the series of demands made upon the city
and Province. The city of Brussels has been given three days to hand
over 50 million francs in coin or bills. The Germans also demand a
tremendous supply of food to be furnished during the next three days. If
the city fails to deliver any part of it, it must pay in coin at a rate
equal to twice the market value of the supplies. The Province of Brabant
must hand over, by the first of next month, 450 millions of francs--90
million dollars. When you consider that the total war indemnity imposed
by Germany upon France in 1870 was only five milliards, the enormity of
this appears. Upon one little province of a tiny country they are
imposing a tax equal to one-tenth that imposed on the whole of France.
How on earth they are ever to arrange to pay it, I cannot possibly see.
I do not know what is to happen if they fail to make good, but I have no
doubt that it will be something pretty dreadful.
This afternoon the Germans went into the Ministry of War and the Foreign
Office, and searched through the archives. It must have been an entirely
futile proceeding, for all papers of any interest were removed to
Antwerp when the Government left. The higher officials who were still
here were kept in the buildings to witness the search--a needless
humiliation. There is talk now of a search of the British Legation, but
we have heard nothing of it and expect that will not be done without
asking our permission first.
* * * * *
_Brussels, August 22, 1914._--Another day with much to do and no great
results.
This morning, at 7 o'clock, General von Jarotzky arrived at the Legation
and was all smiles. It appears that my action, in making known my
displeasure at his behaviour and that of his staff, had a good effect.
We have heard, from several sources, that he blew up everybody in sight
yesterday afternoon when he came out from the Burgomaster's office and
learned that I had departed in bad temper. He knows that nobody dares to
oppose his acts or views, but just the same he gave them fits for not
having made me stay and attend to my case. Be that as it may, he
appeared with his Chief of Staff, and sent up a message that brought the
Minister down in his pajamas and dressing gown. He expressed great
regret for the "misunderstanding" of yesterday evening, and assured the
Minister that there would be no further cause for complaint on our part.
He had in his hand the telegram which we had sent him the evening
before--the very same telegram which we had been trying to get off ever
since the German occupation of the city. He had signed each page of the
message, and had affixed his stamp with an order that it be immediately
transmitted. He explained to the Minister that the best thing to do was
for him to take it in person to the office of the Director of the Bureau
of Telegraphs, who had already received instructions on the subject.
[Illustration: Pass issued by General von Jarotzky, the first German
commander in Brussels, to enable Mr. Gibson to go through the lines to
Antwerp.]
The servants were thrown into a perfect panic by the arrival of the
_Généraux_. It took some argument to convince them that the Germans
would hardly need to send two generals to take them into custody, even
if they had any reason to desire them as prisoners.