It was in Rome itself that I received the tidings—stroke after stroke—of the destruction of the church of Louvain, of the burning of the Library and of the scientific laboratories of our great University and of the devastation of the city, and next of the wholesale shooting of citizens, and tortures inflicted upon women and children, and upon unarmed and undefended men. And while I was still under the shock of these calamities, the telegraph brought us news of the bombardment of our beautiful metropolitan church, of the church of Notre Dame, of the episcopal palace, and of a great part of our dear city of Malines.
Afar, without means of communication with you, I was compelled to lock my grief within my own afflicted heart, and to carry it, with the thought of you, which never left me, to my God.
I needed courage and light, and sought them in such thoughts as these. A disaster has come upon the world, and our beloved little Belgium, a nation so faithful in the great mass of her population to God, so upright in her patriotism, so noble in her King and Government, is the first sufferer. She bleeds; her sons are stricken down, within her fortresses, and upon her fields, in defense of her rights and of her territory. Soon there will not be one Belgian family not in mourning. Why all this sorrow, my God? Lord, Lord, hast Thou forsaken us?
The truth is that no disaster on earth is as terrible as that which our sins provoke.
I summon you to face what has befallen us, and to speak to you simply and directly of what is your duty, and of what may be your hope. That duty I shall express in two words: Patriotism and Endurance.
PATRIOTISM
When, on my return from Rome, I went to Havre to greet our Belgian, French, and English wounded; when, later at Malines, at Louvain, at Antwerp, it was given to me to take the hands of those brave men who carried a bullet in their flesh, a wound on their forehead, because they had marched to the attack of the enemy, or borne the shock of his onslaught, it was a word of gratitude to them that rose to my lips. "O brave friends," I said, "it was for us, it was for each one of us, it was for me, that you risked your lives and are now in pain. I am moved to tell you of my respect, of my thankfulness, to assure you that the whole nation knows how much she is in debt to you."
For in truth our soldiers are our saviors.
A first time, at Liége, they saved France; a second time, in Flanders, they halted the advance of the enemy upon Calais. France and England know it; and Belgium stands before them both, and before the entire world, as a nation of heroes. Never before in my whole life did I feel so proud to be a Belgian as when, on the platforms of French stations, and halting a while in Paris, and visiting London, I was witness of the enthusiastic admiration our allies feel for the heroism of our army. Our King is, in the esteem of all, at the very summit of the moral scale; he is doubtless the only man who does not recognize that fact, as, simple as the simplest of his soldiers, he stands in the trenches and puts new courage, by the calmness of his face, into the hearts of those of whom he requires that they shall not doubt of their country. The foremost duty of every Belgian citizen at this hour is gratitude to the army.
If any man had rescued you from shipwreck or from a fire, you would hold yourselves bound to him by a debt of everlasting thankfulness. But it is not one man, it is two hundred and fifty thousand men who fought, who suffered, who fell for you so that you might be free, so that Belgium might keep her independence, so that after battle, she might rise nobler, purer, more erect, and more glorious than before.
Pray daily, my Brethren, for these two hundred and fifty thousand, and for their leaders to victory; pray for our brothers in arms; pray for the fallen; pray for those who are still engaged; pray for the recruits who are making ready for the fight to come.
Better than any other man, perhaps, do I know what our unhappy country has undergone. Nor will any Belgian, I trust, doubt of what I suffer in my soul, as a citizen and as a Bishop, in sympathy with all this sorrow. These last four months have seemed to me age-long. By thousands have our brave ones been mown down; wives, mothers are weeping for those they shall not see again; hearths are desolate; dire poverty spreads, anguish increases. At Malines, at Antwerp, the people of two great cities have been given over, the one for six hours, the other for thirty-four hours of a continuous bombardment, to the throes of death. I have passed through the greater part of the most terribly devastated districts and the ruins I beheld, and the ashes, were more dreadful than I, prepared by the saddest of forebodings, could have imagined. Other parts which I have not yet had time to visit have in like manner been laid waste. Churches, schools, asylums, hospitals, convents in great numbers, are in ruins. Entire villages have all but disappeared. At Werchter-Wackerzeel, for instance, out of three hundred and eighty homes, a hundred and thirty remain; at Tremeloo two thirds of the village are overthrown; at Bueken out of a hundred houses, twenty are standing; at Schaffen one hundred and eighty-nine houses out of two hundred are destroyed—eleven still stand. At Louvain the third part of the buildings are down; one thousand and seventy-four dwellings have disappeared; on the town land and in the suburbs, one thousand eight hundred and twenty-three houses have been burnt.
In this dear city of Louvain, perpetually in my thoughts, the magnificent church of St. Peter will never recover its former splendor. The ancient college of St. Ives, the art-schools, the consular and commercial schools of the University, the old markets, our rich library with its collections, its unique and unpublished manuscripts, its archives, its gallery of great portraits of illustrious rectors, chancellors, professors, dating from the time of its foundation, which preserved for masters and students alike a noble tradition and were an incitement in their studies—all this accumulation of intellectual, of historic, and of artistic riches, the fruit of the labors of five centuries—all is reduced to dust.
Thousands of Belgian citizens have in like manner been deported to the prisons of Germany, to Münsterlagen, to Celle, to Magdeburg. At Münsterlagen alone three thousand one hundred civil prisoners were numbered. History will tell of the physical and moral torments of their long martyrdom. Hundreds of innocent men were shot. I possess no complete list, but I know that there were ninety-one shot at Aerschot, and that there, under pain of death, their fellow citizens were compelled to dig their graves. In the Louvain group of communes one hundred and seventy-six persons, men and women, old men and babies, rich and poor, in health and sickness, were shot or burnt.
In my diocese alone I know that thirteen priests were put to death. One of these, the parish priest of Gelrode, suffered, I believe, a veritable martyrdom.
We can neither number our dead nor compute the measure of our ruins. And what would it be if we turned our sad steps towards Liége, Namur, Andenne, Dinant, Tamines, Charleroi, and elsewhere?
And where lives were not taken, and where buildings were not thrown down, what anguish unrevealed! Families, hitherto living at ease, now in bitter want; all commerce at an end, all careers ruined; industry at a standstill; thousands upon thousands of workingmen without employment; working-women, shop-girls, humble servant-girls without the means of earning their bread; and poor souls forlorn on the bed of sickness and fever, crying, "O Lord, how long, how long?"
How long, O Lord, they wondered, how long wilt Thou suffer the pride of this iniquity? Or wilt Thou finally justify the impious opinion that Thou carest no more for the work of Thy hands? A shock from a thunderbolt, and behold all human foresight is set at naught. Europe trembles upon the brink of destruction.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
Many are the thoughts that throng the breast of man to-day, and the chief of them all is this: God reveals Himself as the Master. The nations that made the attack, and the nations that are warring in self-defense, alike confess themselves to be in the hand of Him without whom nothing is made, nothing is done. Men long unaccustomed to prayer are turning again to God. Within the army, within the civil world, in public, and within the individual conscience, there is prayer. Nor is that prayer to-day a word learnt by rote, uttered lightly by the lip; it surges from the troubled heart, it takes the form, at the feet of God, of the very sacrifice of life.
God will save Belgium, my Brethren, you cannot doubt it.
Nay, rather, He is saving her.
Across the smoke of conflagration, across the stream of blood, have you not glimpses, do you not perceive signs, of His love for us? Is there a patriot among us who does not know that Belgium has grown great? Nay, which of us would have the heart to cancel this last page of our national history? Which of us does not exult in the brightness of the glory of this shattered nation? Let us acknowledge that we needed a lesson in patriotism. There were Belgians, and many such, who wasted their time and their talents in futile quarrels of class with class, of race with race, of passion with personal passion.
Yet when, on the second of August, a mighty foreign power, confident in its own strength and defiant of the faith of treaties, dared to threaten us in our independence, then did all Belgians, without difference of party, or of condition, or of origin, rise up as one man, [close-ranged] about their own king and their own government, and cry to the invader: "Thou shalt not pass!"
At once, instantly, we were conscious of our own patriotism. For down within us all is something deeper than personal interests, than personal kinships, than party feeling, and this is the need and the will to devote ourselves to that more general interest which Rome called the public thing, Res publica. And this profound will within us is Patriotism.
Our country is not a mere gathering of persons or of families dwelling on the same soil, having amongst themselves relations, more or less intimate, of business, of neighborhood, of a community of memories, happy or unhappy. Not so; it is an association of living souls to be defended and safeguarded at all costs, even the cost of blood, under the leadership of those presiding over its fortunes. And it is because of this general spirit that the people of a country live a common life in the present, through the past, through the aspirations, the hopes, the confidence in a life to come, which they share together. Patriotism, an internal principle of order and of unity, an organic bond of the members of a nation, was placed by the finest thinkers of Greece and Rome at the head of the natural virtues.
ENDURANCE
We may now say, my Brethren, without unworthy pride, that our little Belgium has taken a foremost place in the esteem of nations. I am aware that certain onlookers, notably in Italy and in Holland, have asked how it could be necessary to expose this country to so immense a loss of wealth and of life, and whether a verbal manifesto against hostile aggression, or a single cannon-shot on the frontier, would not have served the purpose of protest. But assuredly all men of good feeling will be with us in our rejection of these paltry counsels.
On the 19th of April, 1839, a treaty was signed in London, by King Leopold, in the name of Belgium on the one part, and by the Emperor of Austria, the King of France, the Queen of England, the King of Prussia, and the Emperor of Russia on the other; and its seventh article decreed that Belgium should form a separate and perpetually neutral State, and should be held to the observance of this neutrality in regard to all other States. The signers promised, for themselves and their successors, upon their oaths, to fulfill and to observe that treaty in every point and every article. Belgium was thus bound in honor to defend her own independence. She kept her oath. The other Powers were bound to respect and to protect her neutrality. Germany violated her oath; England kept hers.
These are the facts.
The laws of conscience are sovereign laws. We should have acted unworthily had we evaded our obligation by a mere feint of resistance. And now we would not change our first resolution; we exult in it. Being called upon to write a most solemn page in the history of our country, we resolved that it should be also a sincere, also a glorious page. And as long as we are required to give proof of endurance, so long we shall endure.
All classes of our citizens have devoted their sons to the cause of their country; but the poorer part of the population have set the noblest example, for they have suffered also privation, cold, and famine. If I may judge of the general feeling from what I have witnessed in the humbler quarters of Malines, and in the most cruelly afflicted districts of my diocese, the people are energetic in their endurance. They look to be righted; they will not hear of surrender.
The sole lawful authority in Belgium is that of our King, of the elected representatives of the nation. This authority alone has a right to our affection, our submission.
Occupied provinces are not conquered provinces. Belgium is no more a German province than Galicia is a Russian province. Nevertheless the occupied portion of our country is in a position it is compelled to endure. The greater part of our towns, having surrendered to the enemy on conditions, are bound to observe those conditions. From the outset of military operations, the civil authorities of the country urged upon all private persons the necessity of avoiding hostile acts against the enemy's army. That instruction remains in force. It is our army, and our army solely, in league with the brave troops of our Allies, that has the honor and the duty of national defense. Let us intrust the army with our final deliverance.
Towards the persons of those who are holding dominion among us by military force, and who cannot but know of the energy with which we have defended, and are still defending, our independence, let us conduct ourselves with all needful forbearance. Let us observe the rules they have laid upon us so long as those rules do not violate our personal liberty, nor our consciences, nor our duty to our country. Let us not take bravado for courage, nor tumult for bravery.
Our distress has moved the other nations. England, Ireland, and Scotland; France, Holland, the United States, Canada, have vied with each other in generosity for our relief. It is a spectacle at once most mournful and most noble. Here again is a revelation of the Providential Wisdom which draws good from evil. In your name, my Brethren, and in my own, I offer to the governments and the nations that have succored us the assurance of our admiration and our gratitude.
OZYMANDIAS
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert.... Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Percy Bysshe Shelley.
AND THE COCK CREW[1]ToC
And in his weather-beaten face
The lines of bitterness grew hard,
For he had seen his dwelling-place
Laid waste in very wantonness,
And all his little treasures flung
Into that never-sated press
From which no wine, but gall, had sprung—
And not his heart alone was sore,
For in his frail old limbs he bore
Wounds of the heavy, ruthless hand
That weighed so cruelly of late
Upon the people and the land.
It was not hard to understand
Why old Gaspard should hate
Even the German lad who lay
His neighbor in the hospital,
The boy who pleaded night and day:
"Don't let me die! don't let me die!
When I see the dawn, I know
I shall live out that day, and then
I'm not afraid—till dark—but oh,
How soon the night comes round again!
Don't let me die! don't let me die!"
[58] Pitiful, half delirious cry,
"They should die, had I the say,
In hell's own torment, one and all!"
And then would drag himself away,
Despite each motion's agony,
To where the wounded poilus lay,
And cheer them with his mimicry
Of barnyard noises, and his gay
Old songs of what life used to be.
One night the lad suddenly cried,
"Mother!" And though the sister knew—
He was so young, so terrified,
"You're safe—the east is light," she lied.
But "No!" he sobbed, "the cock must crow
Before the dawn!" They did not hear
A cripple crawl across the floor,
But all at once, outside the door,
In the courtyard, shrill and clear,
Once, twice and thrice, chanticleer crew.
The blue eyes closed and the boy sighed,
"I'm not afraid, now day's begun.
I'll live—till—" With a smile, he died.
The god of hate, I think that One
Passed through the hospital's dim yard
And turning, looked on old Gaspard.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] COPYRIGHT BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
A BELGIAN LAWYER'S APPEALToC
One of the great lawyers of Belgium in behalf of the members of the bar of Brussels, Liége, Ghent, Charleroi, Mons, Louvain, and Antwerp, appeared twice before the German Court of Justice at Brussels and appealed for more just treatment of the Belgian people. In his first appeal, he protested against the illegal manner in which the Belgians were accused of crime, tried, and convicted at the pleasure of German officials. He concluded with the following eloquent words:
I can understand martial law for armies in the field. It is the immediate reply to an aggression against the troops, the quick justice of the commander of the army responsible for his soldiers. But our armies are far away; we are no longer in the zone of military operations. Nothing here threatens your troops, the inhabitants are calm.
The people have taken up work again. You have bidden them do it. Each one attends to his business—magistrates, judges, officials of the provinces and cities, the clergy, all are at their posts, united in one outburst of national interest and brotherhood.
However, this does not mean that they have forgotten. The Belgian people lived happily in their corner of the earth, confident in their dream of independence. They saw this dream dispelled; they saw their country ruined and devastated; its ancient hospitable soil has been sown with thousands of tombs where our own sleep; the war has made tears flow which no hand can dry. No, the murdered soul of Belgium will never forget.
His second appeal will be spoken by school children in Belgium, and perhaps in America, when the names of the German judges to whom he spoke are forgotten even in Germany.
We are not annexed. We are not conquered. We are not even vanquished. Our army is fighting. Our colors float alongside those of France, England, and Russia. The country subsists. She is simply unfortunate. More than ever, then, we now owe ourselves to her, body and soul. To defend her rights is also to fight for her.
We are living hours now as tragic as any country has ever known. All is destruction and ruin around us. Everywhere we see mourning. Our army has lost half of its effective forces. Its percentage in dead and wounded will never be reached by any of the belligerents. There remains to us only a corner of ground over there by the sea. The waters of the Yser flow through an immense plain peopled by the dead. It is called the Belgian Cemetery. There sleep our children by the thousands. There they are sleeping their last sleep. The struggle goes on bitterly and without mercy.
Your sons, Mr. President, are at the front; mine as well. For months we have been living in anxiety regarding the morrow.
Why these sacrifices, why this sorrow? Belgium could have avoided these disasters, saved her existence, her treasures, and the lives of her children, but she preferred her honor.
EDITH CAVELLToC
Americans are particularly interested in the story of Edith Cavell, because the American minister in Brussels on behalf of the American people asked German officials to spare her life, or at least to postpone her execution, until he might have an opportunity to see that she was properly defended. Germany's disregard of America and the wishes of the American people was clearly shown by the scornful manner in which Germany set aside as of no importance American protests and requests. Her action in this case was similar to her action earlier in regard to the Lusitania, involving in both cases direct falsehoods by representatives of the German government.
Germans wondered that the shooting of an English woman for treason should cause a sensation, just as they wondered why even their enemies did not applaud them for murdering more than a thousand non-combatants on the Lusitania. They did not realize that both of these crimes would add thousands of volunteers to the armies fighting against them, and that they would always be recorded in history as among the most despicable deeds of a civilized nation. Some one has said, "Attila and his Huns were ignorant barbarians, but the modern Huns know better and therefore they are more to be condemned."
Edith Cavell was so brave, so frank, so honest that it would seem that even to the Germans her virtues would
The deep damnation of her taking-off.
But not so, for German education and training have evidently made the German people look upon almost everything in a way different from that of Americans, Englishmen, and Frenchmen. And yet the common German people do at times show that they have a feeling of admiration, if not of affection, for peoples of other nations; for we are told of a German city erecting a statue to the French and English soldiers who died as captives in the German prison located there, with the inscription, To our Comrades, who here died for their Fatherland.
But we must remember that there are many kingdoms in Germany and cruel Prussia rules them all. It was Prussian savagery and barbarity that approved the massacre by the Turks of almost an entire people, the Armenians, and it was done under the eyes of German officers. The same is true of the wholesale slaughter of non-combatant Serbian men, women, and children by the Bulgarians. A word from Germany would have stopped it all.
When the war broke out, Edith Cavell was living in England with her aged mother. She felt her duty was in Belgium and she went to Brussels and established a private hospital. An American woman, Mary Boyle O'Reilly of Boston, a daughter of the poet, John Boyle O'Reilly, worked with her for a time. When Miss O'Reilly was expelled from Belgium, she begged Miss Cavell to leave that land of horror, but Miss Cavell only said, "My duty is here."
She and her nurses cared for many a wounded German soldier and this alone should have insured her fair treatment, if not gratitude, from Germany.
She was arrested, kept in solitary confinement for ten weeks without any charge being made against her; then was tried secretly for having sheltered French and Belgian soldiers who were seeking to escape to Holland.
It is probably true that Miss Cavell did this, but the history of war in modern times records no case where any one has been put to death for giving shelter for a short time to a fugitive soldier. Such an act does not, according to the custom of civilized countries, make one a spy, nor is it treason.
Those who have investigated the case carefully have come to the conclusion that the Germans decided to make a terrible example of some of the women in Brussels who were sympathizing with and perhaps helping French and Belgian soldiers to escape to Holland, for about the same time twenty-two other women were arrested on the same charge as that finally made against Edith Cavell.
When Brand Whitlock, the American minister, learned from an outsider (he could get no information from the German officials) that Edith Cavell had been condemned, he sent the following letters, one a personal one, the other an official one, to the German commandant:
Personal:
My Dear Baron:
I am too ill to put my request before you in person, but once more I appeal to the generosity of your heart. Stand by and save from death this unfortunate woman. Have pity on her.
Your devoted friend,
Brand Whitlock.
Official:
I have just heard that Miss Cavell, a British subject, and consequently under the protection of my Legation, was this morning condemned to death by court-martial.
If my information is correct, the sentence in the present case is more severe than all the others that have been passed in similar cases which have been tried by the same Court, and, without going into the reasons for such a drastic sentence, I feel that I have the right to appeal to your Excellency's feelings of humanity and generosity in Miss Cavell's favor, and to ask that the death penalty passed on Miss Cavell may be commuted and that this unfortunate woman shall not be executed.
Miss Cavell is the head of the Brussels Surgical Institute. She has spent her life in alleviating the sufferings of others, and her school has turned out many nurses who have watched at the bedside of the sick all the world over, in Germany as in Belgium. At the beginning of the war Miss Cavell bestowed her care as freely on the German soldiers as on others. Even in default of all other reasons, her career as a servant of humanity is such as to inspire the greatest sympathy and to call for pardon. If the information in my possession is correct, Miss Cavell, far from shielding herself, has, with commendable straightforwardness, admitted the truth of all the charges against her, and it is the very information which she herself has furnished, which has aggravated the severity of the sentence passed on her.
It is then with confidence, and in the hope of its favorable reception, that I have the honor to present to your Excellency my request for pardon on Miss Cavell's behalf.
Brand Whitlock.
But no real attention was paid to the American notes. Edith Cavell was sentenced at five o'clock on the afternoon of October 11, and was put to death that same night.
Permission was refused to take her body for burial outside the prison. It is doubtless still buried in the prison yard unless the Germans have removed it for fear a monument may be erected above it. The English are to erect a monument in her honor in London. Dr. James M. Beck, in writing about her case, says of her burial in the prison yard, "One can say of that burial place, as Byron said of the prison cell of Chillon: 'Let none these marks efface, for they appeal from tyranny to God.'"
SON[2]ToC
And I watched him go, my beautiful boy, and a weary woman was I.
For my hair is gray, and his was gold; he'd the best of his life to live;
And I'd loved him so, and I'm old, I'm old; and he's all I had to give.
With the sun in his heart he went away, but he took the sun with him.
For look! How the leaves are falling now, and the winter won't be long....
Oh, boy, my boy with the sunny brow, and the lips of love and of song!
And we'd drift to the Valley of Let's Pretend, on the beautiful River of Dream.
Oh, dear little heart! All wealth untold would I gladly, gladly pay
Could I just for a moment closely hold that golden head to my gray.
[67] And I run and I hold him up in the air, and he laughs and shouts with glee;
A little bundle of love and mirth, crying: "Come, Mumsie dear!"
Ah, me! If he called from the ends of the earth I know that my heart would hear.
Yea, a loss like that is a glorious gain, and pitiful proud am I.
For Peace must be bought with blood and tears, and the boys of our hearts must pay;
And so in our joy of the after-years, let us bless them every day.
And the gold of his youth he so gladly gave, yet to me he'll never be dead.
And the sun in my Devon lane will be gay, and my boy will be with me still,
So I'm finding the heart to smile and say: "Oh God, if it be Thy Will!"
FOOTNOTES:
[2] COPYRIGHT BY BARSE AND HOPKINS.
THE CASE OF SERBIAToC
But Belgium is not the only little nation that has been attacked in this war, and I make no excuse for referring to the case of the other little nation—the case of Serbia. The history of Serbia is not unblotted. What history in the list of nations is unblotted? The first nation that is without sin, let her cast a stone at Serbia—a nation trained in a horrible school. But she won her freedom with her tenacious valor, and she has maintained it by the same courage. If any Serbians were mixed up in the assassination of the Grand Duke, they ought to be punished. Serbia admits that. The Serbian Government had nothing to do with it. Not even Austria claimed that. The Serbian Prime Minister is one of the most capable and honored men in Europe. Serbia was willing to punish any one of her subjects who had been proved to have any complicity in that assassination. What more could you expect?
What were the Austrian demands? Serbia sympathized with her fellow-countrymen in Bosnia. That was one of her crimes. She must do so no more. Her newspapers were saying nasty things about Austria. They must do so no longer. That is the Austrian spirit. How dare you criticize a Prussian official? And if you laugh, it is a capital offense. Serbian newspapers must not criticize Austria. I wonder what would have happened had we taken up the same line about German newspapers. Serbia said: "Very well, we will give orders to the newspapers that they must not criticize Austria in future, neither Austria, nor Hungary, nor anything that is theirs." She promised not to sympathize with Bosnia; promised to write no critical articles about Austria. She would hold no public meetings at which anything unkind was said about Austria. That was not enough. She must dismiss from her army officers whom Austria should subsequently name. But these officers had just emerged from a war where they were adding luster to the Serbian arms—gallant, brave, efficient. I wonder whether it was their guilt or their efficiency that prompted Austria's action. Serbia was to undertake in advance to dismiss them from the army—the names to be sent in subsequently. Can you name a country in the world that would have stood that? Supposing Austria or Germany had issued an ultimatum of that kind to this country. "You must dismiss from your army and from your navy all those officers whom we shall subsequently name." Well, I think I could name them now. Lord Kitchener would go. Sir John French would be sent about his business. General Smith-Dorrien would be no more, and I am sure that Sir John Jellicoe would go. And there is another gallant old warrior who would go—Lord Roberts.
It was a difficult situation for a small country. Here was a demand made upon her by a great military power who could put five or six men in the field for every one she could; and that power supported by the greatest military power in the world. How did Serbia behave? It is not what happens to you in life that matters; it is the way in which you face it. And Serbia faced the situation with dignity. She said to Austria: "If any officers of mine have been guilty and are proved to be guilty, I will dismiss them." Austria said, "That is not good enough for me." It was not guilt she was after, but capacity.
Then came Russia's turn. Russia has a special regard for Serbia. She has a special interest in Serbia. Russians have shed their blood for Serbian independence many a time. Serbia is a member of her family, and she cannot see Serbia maltreated. Austria knew that. Germany knew that, and Germany turned around to Russia and said: "I insist that you shall stand by with your arms folded whilst Austria is strangling your little brother to death." What answer did the Russian Slav give? He gave the only answer that becomes a man. He turned to Austria and said: "You lay hands on that little fellow and I will tear your ramshackle empire limb from limb."
David Lloyd George, 1914.
THE MURDER OF CAPTAIN FRYATTToC
Captain Charles Fryatt was in command of a British steamship named Brussels, running from Tilbury, England, to the Hook of Holland. His ship was hailed in 1915 by a German submarine and ordered to stop.
A torpedo costs several thousand dollars, therefore a submarine saves one whenever she can sink a ship by some other means. Also a submarine can carry but few torpedoes, so by saving them she can remain longer at sea and at her work of destruction.
Captain Fryatt was well aware that if he came to a stop, the Germans would board his ship and sink her by bombs, or would order the passengers off and sink her by shells from the guns. This is the way they sank the Carolina off the coast of New Jersey, leaving the passengers in open boats—many of whom died from exposure and by the capsizing of one boat in the tempest which struck them at midnight.
Captain Fryatt knew that by the laws of nations he had the right to defend his ship, so instead of stopping as the Germans ordered him to do, he put on full speed and turned the head of his ship towards the submarine, hoping to ram her and sink her. He was obeying instructions from his government, and was doing nothing but what he had a perfect right to do according to international law.
He did not succeed, but he gained time and forced the submarine to submerge, for British destroyers were coming up in answer to his wireless call.
For his bravery, the British Government rewarded him by giving him a gold watch and naming him with praise in the House of Commons.
More than a year later, on June 23, 1916, German warships out on a raid captured the Brussels, which Captain Fryatt still commanded. He was taken to Bruges, Belgium, and put on trial for his life. The Germans claimed his case was like that of a non-combatant on land who fired upon the soldiers. They found him guilty on June 27 and sentenced him to be shot, for having attempted to sink the submarine, U-33, by ramming it. They laid much emphasis on the fact that the British Government had rewarded him, although this really had nothing to do with whether or not he had a right to defend his ship.
The United States was not then at war with Germany, and the diplomatic affairs of England were in charge of the United States Ambassador in Berlin. When Ambassador Gerard learned that Captain Fryatt had been captured and taken to Bruges for trial, he sent two notes to the proper German officials, demanding the right to visit Captain Fryatt and to secure counsel for him.
The German officials acknowledged his notes and assured him that they would take the necessary steps to meet his request.
But the morning of the day after Ambassador Gerard sent his notes, Captain Fryatt was tried and sentenced, and was shot in the afternoon of the same day. As in the case of Edith Cavell, Germany's answer to America was a lie, and a scornful carrying out of her illegal purpose before the American Ambassador could do anything more. She acted in exactly the same way in connection with the Lusitania, and with all her submarine warfare, or piracy, as it really is according to international law.
One of the leading German writers on international law says, "The merchant ship has the right of self-defense against an enemy attack, and this right it can exercise against visit, for this is indeed the first act of capture."
Germany knew she had no right to shoot Captain Fryatt, and she did not want her right challenged at his trial; so she did not allow the American Ambassador to see him and to secure counsel for him.
She desired to make him an example of German "frightfulness" as she had in the case of Edith Cavell and of the Lusitania. She thought this would prevent other British vessels trying to ram her submarines.
The whole world is wondering if Germany would cower under "frightfulness," and therefore believes other peoples will. Her policy certainly has never had the effect that she hoped it would. It has simply made her enemies fight all the harder and dare all the more, because they remember her inhuman acts and unlawful deeds.
The Germans published the following notice of the trial and execution: