* * *
During my last visit to Holland I was struck by a curious phenomenon. Dutch people are very fond of humming a tune. They hum it when they walk, when they read, when on business, while smoking huge cigars. True enough, it is very difficult to detect the tune, as they generally distort it in the most unexpected way, but as everybody seems to be fond of the very same tune at the very same time, after hearing three or four performances you usually get to know what they mean by the series of mewings and mutterings they send out, together with abundant puffs of white smoke. My different visits to Holland have been marked by different favourites in the way of tunes: "Merry Widow" three years ago, then "Dollar Princess," then "El Choclo," then "Dixie," and the last time "Tipperary."
Men, women, and children have really gone Tipperary-mad; they make the most gallant efforts to master the tune, hum it all the time, ask for it in the café or theatre, and put the Tipperary record on the gramophone every night before going to bed.
When at the Hague I saw at a music-hall a revue in which the Tipperary tune returned over and over again like a nightmare, and a Dutchman at my side observed to his wife, who was marking time to the music by alternating movements of her head, causing her corkscrew earrings to rattle to and fro: "Isn't it a charming melody?"
At any rate, the "charming melody" has been officially acknowledged in Holland, and I heard the military band at the Bosch playing it in front of the Royal villa.
"That's a real breach of neutrality," I remarked to a Dutch officer who was with me. "If you are not careful you will have serious trouble with Berlin!"
"Oh, no; we are very neutral. I, personally, am absolutely impartial, and don't care a scrap, for instance, whether Berlin is blown up or burnt down," he answered, repeating, for the hundredth time, a joke which has lately captured Dutch sympathies at least as much as "Tipperary."
Walking through the wonderful wood which probably has no equal in Europe, calm and imposing as it is with its green ponds and its gigantic lime-trees, we came to the large avenue on which is the Palace of Peace, the greatest irony in brick and stone human mind has ever conceived.
"You should be ashamed to talk like that, you official guardian of the temple of European peace," I said.
"We are jolly glad to have this big palace here," he answered, smiling. "We are short of large barracks at the Hague!"
* * *
The names of Nispen, Rosendaal, Bergen-op-Zoom, and of many other little towns and villages of North Brabant, will always in future call to my mind the most touching scenes I have ever witnessed. The multitude of refugees who have found asylum in the frontier towns of Holland called to my memory the crowds of starving folk in the best of Goya's sanguines, or the intricate groups of absent-minded humanity in some of Previati's wonderful drawings. Every face, every movement, not only of men and women who have seen and understood, but even of children, is full of pathos and tragedy.
Even now, months and months after their flight from that hell of sacked, burned, and destroyed towns which was Belgium before Antwerp's capitulation, they look frightened, worried, and restless as on the day of their arrival.
Dutch hospitality, which has been celebrated for centuries and centuries, has in this case surpassed itself. The crowd of starving, penniless, terrorised people found a kindly reception, and within a few days' time all churches, public buildings, theatres, and chapels were transformed into lodgings for the new guests.
But soon this was not enough, and temporary constructions had to be erected at public expense, most of the able-bodied refugees helping in the task.
About 350,000 refugees are now in Holland, some in the frontier towns, some in the large towns of South and North Holland. Rotterdam and Amsterdam, the Hague, and Leiden and Haarlem received with outstretched arms, dressed, sheltered, and fed their share of Belgians without making any fuss about it, just as if it was the most natural thing to help this wave of humanity which had come into their country.
It may be said here that not a single charity show, fund, or special committee has been arranged. The different corporations give what they can or take as many refugees as they can afford to keep. The same with private families. I have seen a humble workman offer a corner of his bedroom and his dining-table to a Belgian boy who had lost his parents, and consider him as one of the family.
At Ossendrecht, quite close to the barrier of wood, barbed wire, and stones thrown across the country road to mark the frontier of Holland and Belgium, of peace and war, there is a little café where most of the refugees from Antwerp made their first halt in Dutch territory, and which really would have done a roaring trade since the beginning of the war but for the fact that most of the customers were not even rich enough to pay for their bun or for their glass of beer, and but for the kind-hearted proprietress who could not refuse such comforts even if she had no hope of getting paid for it.
She was a tall, solid, and healthy-looking woman, who seemed to have stepped from a Rubens canvas, with a glory of fair, curly hair and a complexion to render jealous the brightest Haarlem tulip. When she asked me in her curious dialect—which, as a compliment to me, was mixed with a few English words—if I wanted "Pilsener" or "Dunkel," she was carrying two babies of apparently the same age in her arms, one each side. I was wondering how she would manage to bring me my drink, when she put one of the babies on the counter and kept the other in her arms. The baby on the counter fell asleep, but the other one started crying desperately.
She told me that only one of the babies, the one on the counter, was her own, and that he was born in August; then her husband was called away by the mobilisation order, and the refugees began to pour into Holland like flocks of sheep chased by wolves. One day a tired, ill-looking woman came with a baby in her arms. She crossed the frontier and was almost carried into the little café, as she was too faint to walk any further. She said her husband had been killed at Liège, and asked to remain just one night. Though there was not a single bedroom to let in the little café, the kind-hearted giantess agreed. The next morning the Belgian woman was very ill, and in two days she was dead.
"The little girl was just about as old as my boy. I was strong enough to keep the two," she concluded, with a proud smile. "Why shouldn't I have kept the two?"
"And what about your husband?" I asked, admiring her great simplicity.
"I wrote him a postcard, telling everything; and he answered that for him it would just be as if we had got twins."
From Ossendrecht to Bergen-op-Zoom a curious steam tramcar, in the middle of which a group of natives and refugees dry their feet at a red-hot stove, affords me a curious place of observation. Old women, in the celebrated lace bonnets and gilded helmets of the Dutch peasants, seem great friends with Belgian girls, who try their best to convert their Flemish into a language as nearly as possible Dutch. I learn that a lot of refugees go on daily pilgrimages to the frontier, where in one way or another they manage to get some news, or at least a talk with their country-people who continuously come out of Belgium.
The refugees' most difficult task is apparently to find each other. I know of sisters from Malines with their families who have been living for two months within a few hundred yards one of the other, and each believing the other killed or gone to England. One finds everywhere, carved into trees, scribbled on walls, or written on pieces of paper nailed here and there, addresses of refugees wishing and trying to meet old friends or relations.
Sometimes the address is a sensible one, but often one cannot help laughing on learning that the present address of a refugee's family, or part of it, is a church, or a theatre, or a motor garage, or even, as I have seen, a stable or cellar.
At Bergen-op-Zoom the refugees are certainly twice as numerous as the ordinary residents, and the little town, the present look of which belies its bellicose traditions, has been given up completely to them.
Here the refugees can get their meals for nothing, or, if they can afford to pay for them, for a few coppers, and the depôts of foodstuffs specially reserved for them are so gigantic that they seem sufficient to keep the whole country going for a long time.
I have assisted at a dinner of refugees in a large schoolroom close to the Hof van Holland Hotel; hot steaming soup, vegetables, roast meat, cheese, and ham were freely given away by young girls in the picturesque costume of the country.
The food seems excellent. The convivial scene reminded me more of the dinner of country people than of a charity meal. A faint smile comes back to most of the refugees' faces as they eat.
This war, the simple and noble manner in which the Dutch have given all they could to the refugee Belgians, will certainly kill for ever the century-long jealousies which were still alive a few months ago.
One must have known Belgium before the war, and have travelled through that rich and beautiful country in times of peace, to realise how great is the change. All that has been written up to now about what has happened there is in reality much less than the truth.
Every town, large and small, every country village, one might almost say every inch of Belgian soil, bears the heavy mark of the invaders. What nobody dared to touch they have destroyed; what was believed to be protected by religion and tradition they have profaned; what centuries had made sacred for any thinking being they have demolished.
We send to prison and often take the life of the man who kills another man. Here defenceless old folk, women, and children have been killed by thousands without a motive, even without a pretext. We rage impotently at the earthquake which destroys towns and takes the toll of life. Here human beings have surpassed the earthquake. We shiver at the idea that a fire could destroy the treasures of art which are often the only chain which links us to past generations. Here men who proclaimed themselves the greatest admirers of all the arts stood by and watched the treasures of the world burn by the flames they themselves had lighted.
I have been practically across the whole of Belgium, from east to west, from north to south. From Antwerp to Liége, from Namur to Tournai and to Ghent, by road and by rail, but mostly on foot, on horseback, or by prehistoric vehicles, as it is impossible to get a motor-car at any price. Always the same sight. A population that hardly dares to hope, aching for real news—a population that is feeling a grief too deep for tears, and is plunged into a tragic, dumb sorrow. There it lives and works under the mocking eye of the Conqueror. Sometimes this Conqueror is frankly rude and violent, as he loves to feel and to look like the real descendants of that Attila he has glorified. Sometimes he takes on a mask of scoffing politeness which is still more unbearable. During the first month or so the Germans tried to make friends with the population; the men tried to mix with the people; the officers with the best families. Their advances always received an icy though more or less polite reception, so now the enemy has assumed an air of disdain for the weak little nation it is keeping under its heel.
The little steamboat which took me from Flushing to Antwerp all across the Escaut was laden with a pathetic crowd. There were mothers going back to see their sons, who, being of age liable to military service, had not been allowed to leave Belgium; parents whose only desire was to discover the grave of their son; people who, having come to an end of their resources, were going back to their deserted ruined homes, to their little piece of land which is now covered by water two feet deep.
* * *
When we sight Antwerp it is already dusk, and round us is the large harbour, which has completely lost its wonderful multiform life. Carcases of old boats, breasts and keels of sunken ships, emerge from the lead-like water, suggesting the terrific curves of prehistoric monsters. Some of these boats were sunk by the British before they left. Others were sunk by the Germans, who madly shelled their own mercantile ships together with those of the Allies. On the top of a mast a French flag is still being washed continuously by the waves.
The complicated landing formalities distract my attention from the contemplation of this cemetery of ships. We are searched three times. Every scrap of paper in our pockets, every single article in our luggage, is carefully examined. Then our passports. Very few of these seem complete enough to please the German authorities. A man who is travelling with somebody else's pass is discovered and taken away. Two ladies are not allowed to land, and they are taken back on board screaming and crying; in two days they will be sent back to Holland. Only German is spoken here, though nearly all the officials know French perfectly. If one does not understand German, one cannot possibly get on. After a couple of hours we are allowed to go into the town. No more taxi-cabs are running owing to the shortage of petrol, and also to the fact that all vehicles have been taken up by the German Government. The town is dark for fear of an aerial attack. Patrols of Landsturm men pass continuously across the principal street, and fill the town with the squeaky noise of their nailed boots. The password is loudly shouted when they meet another patrol.
At the hotel everybody is German, from the manager to the liftman and to the chambermaids. As for the guests, they are all German officers. Every good hotel in Belgium is at the present moment inhabited almost exclusively by German officers, and outside the main doors a white, black, and red striped sentry-box has taken the place of the majestic doorkeeper.
Most of the officers are not alone; they have sent for their wives, and very often even their children, nursemaids, servants, and dogs.
I am told the German Government is encouraging this kind of thing, and offers special travel facilities for wives and families. Lately non-commissioned officers and men have been allowed to send for their families. I don't know the real reason of all this, but it is certain that the Germans are trying hard to give the Belgians the impression that they have come to stay. In many places they have taken houses or flats for a year, and have paid for them in advance, and in some small towns in which it is not possible to get a comfortable residence they have started the construction of new villas and cottages.
I walk down the Avenue de Keyzer and enter a very large restaurant, which seems also completely in German hands. Even the menu is printed in German, and hardly a single Belgian enters the huge establishment. I ask for some newspapers, and I am told they can only get German ones; at ten o'clock every light must be out. People walking in the street without special permits after half-past ten are likely to be arrested.
Antwerp is probably the most Germanised town in all Belgium, owing to the fact, I believe, that even before the war any amount of German people lived here, and nearly all the hotels were already in German hands. The town itself does not appear much damaged by the bombardment. Now and again a large hole or a burnt ruin shows the spot were a bomb has burst, but to see real destruction one must go to the southern suburbs, outside the Porte de Berckem.
Here are the old forts, some half destroyed by shells, some still untouched, and most of the houses show wide open wounds, red with freshly smashed bricks. Most of the forts are now converted into barracks for the German troops, and near every one of them is a small cemetery, with many a glorious name written on the rough, white wooden crosses.
Though most of the actual fighting took place outside the old fortification near the new fortresses, at about three miles' distance from the town, some of the old seventeenth-century forts have received their share of shells, and do not seem to have done at all badly, considering the very modern artillery which has beaten them.
Antwerp has lost more than three-quarters of its usual population, a large part of which joined the army or escaped to Holland and England. That is why, perhaps, foodstuff is still comparatively cheap here, and everything except bread and vegetables seems fairly plentiful. Flour is very scarce, and all sort of ingredients are used in its place.
Curiously enough, while bread is scarce and very bad even in the best restaurants, and while in most villages people are forbidden to buy more than a small ration per head, confectioners' shops are full of cakes and sweets of all descriptions. I could not help thinking of the words attributed to a fine lady of France: "Il n'y a plus de pain? Pourquoi ne mangent-ils pas de la brioche?"
As for vegetables, the Belgian gardens have been completely swamped by the inundations, and the produce imported from Germany does not seem to go very far.
There has been apparently a quiet exodus of works of art from Antwerp's famous museums to Germany, though apparently most of the Rubens, Rembrandts, Van Dycks, and Teniers, which were the gems of the Antwerp collections, were taken away before the arrival of the Huns, and are said to be now in a very safe place. Some of the remainder have now found their way to Germany. By the way, some of the rarest specimens of the Zoo animals have shared the fate of the old masters, and now languish behind alien bars.
The town is infested with spies, who are relentlessly hunting down Frenchmen and Englishmen. As a matter of fact, everyone who comes into Belgium is provided straight away with a sort of guardian angel, who very often does not leave him for many days, and possibly not before he has given him some trouble with the German Kommandantur.
This has happened to me, as I will relate later on, and also to most American and Dutch subjects who get into Belgium at the present moment.
Some of them, for the simple fact that they are journalists, are taken to Germany and interned there, and when the Embassies of the different countries protest and claim their subjects, the Government of Berlin answers that the captured journalists are not considered as prisoners, but are only detained for a certain time—that is to say, for as long as the news they have gathered remains important if made public.
Another variety of the so-called German Secret Service is the agent-provocateur, who generally speaks perfect French and Flemish, and gets a fixed sum for every arrest effected by the police on his initiative.
In Antwerp I saw one of these spies approach an old gentleman who had a Belgian rosette in his buttonhole. He was on a tramcar platform, and the spy said to him, "Very bitter weather for our poor little soldiers at the front, isn't it, sir?" The old gentleman evidently knew the identity of his companion, for he simply stared at the rascal and turned his face the other way.
The favourite ground of action of this army of spies is the railway carriage. There acquaintances are easily and quickly made. I very often saw people taken away at the station by two soldiers, while the hero of this beautiful deed was following at a short distance with his face wreathed in the happiest of smiles.
To travel in Belgium now is a complicated task; railways are completely taken over by the German War Office, and only Germans are employed. Not even the old porters are allowed in the stations. No tickets are given without a special pass from the Kommandantur of the town, saying where the applicant wishes to go, for how long, and for what reason. Then you pay for your ticket, provided you make yourself understood by the German employees, and you have the exact amount in marks and not in Belgian money. There are only third-class carriages at first-class fares—für Zivilpersonen—all the other first and second class carriages are marked Nur für Heeresangehorige—those who don't pay evidently.
Before arriving on the platform you are searched by very rude soldiers wearing a large crescent-shaped brass plate with the word "polizei" suspended to their necks by a chain, like a metal label on a brandy bottle.
After this you carry your own luggage to the train, which is thoughtfully kept waiting a quarter of a mile outside the station, in rain or snow, and sit down in a freezing carriage without any light or heating, but possibly with one or more windows smashed. Half an hour or so after the fixed time the train begins to move; a little notice, in German naturally, tells you not to put your head outside the window while crossing a bridge because sentries will shoot at you, and another notice says that, owing to the crisis, you may be asked to step out of the carriage at any moment and without any right to protest, even if you happen to have the pluck to do so.
And ultimately, after hours waiting in intermediate railway stations, after changing trains two or three times on a ten miles' fare, you sometimes arrive; you and your luggage are searched once again, and then you are let out.
I feel sure most of those gentlemen got their iron crosses for much less than this Odyssey.
* * *
It was five o'clock in the afternoon when I walked out of Louvain station on to a muddy piece of uneven ground surrounded by ruins which were once the station square. It was a grey day, and a few stray flakes of snow were blown by the icy whirlwind in all directions. The weather was perfectly consonant with the general aspect of the town.
Right and left I could discover nothing but ruins; it was hard to tell which was the road and which the site of former buildings. Enormous masses of calcinated bricks and stones are all that remain of the houses which have collapsed; as for the others which are still standing, their appearance is still more tragic. All the inside part, the ceilings, the staircases, the roofs, have been burned away, and the outer wall, all out of perpendicular, still shows the pots of flowers, the iron bars, and the metallic parts of the shutters which were burned away.
Entire rows of houses protrude on the street as if they are going to collapse at any minute; others lean backwards just as if they were frightened; others are all leaning on the right or the left side as if a terrible wind had forced them into that unnatural position.
Here at another spot the walls of two houses touch each other at the top, forming a sort of pointed arch. The steeple of a little church leans far more than the famous Pisa Tower.
From every window there hangs a curious sort of transparent stalactite, which at first sight looks like an icicle, and is formed by the window glass melted in the dreadful heat. A three-floor house has collapsed completely except for the wall facing the street, and at one of the second-floor windows a bird-cage, suspended by a chain, is still hanging, and the blizzard rattles it continuously to and fro. For the fire has got a sort of sinister humour of its own. Here it has destroyed completely the powerful masonry of a fifteenth-century house whose walls were four feet thick, and next door it has blackened without burning a fragile-looking cottage, and even left a white and red check curtain hanging from the window. Further down, a butcher's shop has completely disappeared, but a large metallic sign with an enormous bull painted on it is still at its place, sustained, a miracle of balance, by the frame of the burned awning.
I walk down the Rue de la Station to the Grand' Place. Here was the fine theatre in Italian renaissance; now only the four pillars of the front mark the place where it was standing. Farther down, near the gigantic ruins of the University and the Library, is the once-famous Cathedral of St. Peter.
Up to a few months ago this building was one of the most beautiful examples of the Flemish florid-Gothic. All lovers of old things remember its windows, made more elegant than those of any other Gothic cathedral by a sort of carved balcony, its steep roof, its solid-looking, severe front without the traditional portals. Now all this has disappeared. The roof has collapsed. The wonderfully painted stained windows are no more. The carvings have been reduced to shapeless calcinated stones, and the bricks underneath, re-baked by the flames, show themselves as red as a fresh wound. A notice stuck on what was a beautifully carved oak door tells me that the entrance to the cathedral is strictly "verboten." But a couple of marks make the soldier on guard close both eyes, and he lets me in after having warned me not to say a word or make any noise, as pieces of burned wood and of cornice are dropping down at the slightest movement.
Inside one walks on a bed of rubbish four to seven feet deep. The huge pillars stand without supporting any vault, like useless date trees. The famous tabernacle of Mathieu de Layens has been cracked by the heat, and tattered blackened pieces of canvas hang from the walls once covered with paint. As for the twenty-four little statues which used to decorate the choir, they have disappeared. I don't know if they were taken away by the priests before the destruction of the cathedral or stolen by the Germans after it.
Outside, the streets are nearly deserted. A few soldiers, a few ragged people begging for a copper or a piece of bread, these I see; a few of the old inhabitants searching the remains of their homes and contemplating, with the look of somebody who sees an old friend, every bit of metal, every fragment of pottery they happen to find. They have constructed temporary shelters and collected therein what the flames have spared. Some are looking under their house ruins for a member of the family who has disappeared. Every day a new corpse is found. In every square are fresh graves, and the very day of my visit five more victims of German violence had been buried right in the middle of the station square, all round the statue of Van der Weyer, which has been respected probably as an homage to its ugliness. The Kommandant of Louvain insisted that the victims should be buried there, and not in the cemetery, "to set a good example!"
In this phrase is the reason of the destruction of the harmless little town—a reason which has puzzled the whole world.
For the most dreadful part of the destruction of Louvain is that there has been no fighting, no shelling, nothing of what we generally understand by the word war. The town had been quietly occupied by the Germans, and they forced the population to leave their houses without carrying anything with them. People who tried to save anything were robbed of what they had taken with them, the earrings were pulled out of the women's ears (I have seen a body with both the ear-lobes torn in two), the pockets searched, and in more than one case anybody who was found to be carrying something was immediately shot.
Petrol and some other new liquid combustible quite recently discovered in a Berlin laboratory, and which the Louvain people have christened "Colofogne du Diable," were poured abundantly on the whole town, except, perhaps, on twenty houses inhabited by Germans. I saw, in one of the station rooms, the fire engines which have been used for this purpose, fire engines which bear the arms of the City of Louvain, and which, with cruel irony, were used to set fire to the town they had been created to save. Specially made bombs were thrown into every house, and the Germans retired outside the town on the great boulevard to enjoy a spectacle really worthy of Nero.
But at Louvain the Germans have surpassed Nero. While the town was still burning all the population, regardless of age or sex, was arranged in a single line near Mont César. And then the most dreadful thing happened.
The Romans, to subdue soldiers' rebellions, invented a punishment which always seemed to the world the limit of cruelty—decimation.
The Germans at Louvain did the same thing, but they beat the Romans. Every third man was the victim. I met a gentleman who had been twice through this ordeal. He was still young, but his hair was grey, and his eyes had in them a far-off expression of terror. Near the cathedral somebody pointed out to me a young woman gone mad through having lost her husband and brother in this way.
* * *
From Louvain to Malines the country shows all the signs of dreadful desolation. Flooded land covered with ice, under which the dead lie by hundreds, pieces of wood crowned by Belgian képis or Prussian helmets marking the grave of officers—this is the sight. Flooded trenches and rusty wirework, burned or cut trees, telegraphic poles smashed by shells, and again burned houses and windmills, some of the large wings of which have been amputated, and little ruined châteaux on the top of which waves a German flag.
The train passes the Dyle on a temporary bridge constructed at the side of the old one destroyed by the retreating Belgians. Here were many large greenhouses in which the cultivation of the orchid had reached its highest degree of perfection. Now they look like enormous cages, every one of their windows having been smashed.
Malines station gives you an idea of what the whole town looks like. A large placard tells you that the town is now called Mecheln, and underneath it is a large picture of the general who ordered the shelling of the town, but met his death the same day. German soldiers keep the frame constantly decorated with laurel branches. The glass roof is torn by an enormous hole, through which the snow enters freely. The waiting-room has also an extra aperture, and a bomb has taken away every bit of the stucco work and left the walls completely bare. Malines was not set on fire; all the ruin brought on it was due to the blind violence of the high explosives. Evidently they are not as destructive as the people who have invented them, and the town does not look half as bad as Louvain.
Though very few of the houses are untouched, the general aspect of the quiet town has not changed much. Only one or two of the large domes and steeples which used to emerge from the roofs of the small houses have disappeared, and the unfinished tower of St. Rombaut has altered its massive silhouette a little.
Now and again I see deep holes, caused by shells, and houses which have lost a corner, and allow a glance of their domestic life through a large crevice. Here a quiet "béguinage" has received a projectile in full, and from the street I can see a whitewashed room with a decapitated painted crucifix, and hanging to a nail a black bonnet of the old Brabant country woman.
I think of the tragedy of the poor old lady who received that unexpected visit in the very room in which she had chosen to end her life. The "béguinages" of Malines are said to be the most strict of the whole of Belgium, and in some of them the old women live for years without seeing an outsider. Where are now the poor old things who thought every day's life full enough of private worries, and have now been reached in their seclusion by this dreadful catastrophe?
Curiously enough, Malines, which can be considered as the religious metropolis of Belgium, establishes a real record in the way of sieges, pillages, and plunders. French, English, Dutch have often taken and half destroyed the town, and ultimately Napoleon dismantled it in 1804. Some old twelfth and thirteenth century houses which have resisted all previous trials have been fatally hit now. The Grand' Place, which used to delight the lovers of old Flemish constructions, has greatly suffered, and the shells with subtle perversity have spared some ugly modern buildings and raged on what centuries had respected.
Alas! these descriptions of destroyed towns, of murder and pillage; the stories of unbelievable atrocities, even only those which I know are true, the pictures of misery and famine which nobody would have believed possible in our times, could be continued page after page.
But what happened in the towns is nothing compared with what happened in the country. There, far from the control of high officers, the blonde beast has given way to all the brutal follies of which the Hun is now known to be capable.
I have seen and heard things that disgust keeps me from writing; things compared with which the excesses of the French Revolution, the bloodthirsty pleasures of some barbarian kings, the exploits of some notorious brigands, are but the A B C of an art in which the German army has certainly reached the highest possible standard of perfection.
To penetrate into Belgium with a passport which proves, alas! too clearly that the bearer of it has been twice to Berlin, once to Constantinople, and often to Paris since the war broke out, and that he has had his passport visé at the various Consulates in London, is, as a Belgian friend told me, asking for trouble.
My troubles really began before leaving Holland. The German Consul in Flushing makes all foreigners who want to go to Belgium (though there are few enough who attempt the adventure) sign a special declaration saying that they take the full responsibility of their own act; no passports are given to leave Belgium, and people going in are likely to be kept there up to the end of the war.
The night before, at the Albion, an inn which arrogates to itself the pompous name of Grand Hotel, I met two Belgian refugees who had succeeded in escaping from Belgium two days before, crossing the marshes and wireworks near Maesevck; and though I did not fancy this way was a very comfortable one, I couldn't see why I should not use it myself in case of necessity.
At any rate, I bravely signed the paper, with the idea that something or somebody would get me out of trouble, and, as a matter of fact, I did not have trouble during the first part of my journey.
I began to think that all that had been said about the cleverness of the German police was a little exaggerated. But at the end of my first day in Brussels, having retired to my room in the hotel, I was just going to bed, when I received a visit from two gentlemen who, I learned, were members of the German police. They were accompanied by four helmeted and fully-armed soldiers, two of whom remained in the corridor outside the door, while the other two stood like mummies, one at each side of the bed. First one of the two civilians, who seemed the higher-placed, informed me in excellent English that I was a very suspicious person, that the police were perfectly aware of what I was doing in Belgium, and that the Imperial Government would take against me any steps it thought suitable.
I answered in French that I did not understand him, and that I had my passport in perfect order. "It is easy to have a passport, but the Imperial Government is not the dupe of such childish tricks." He then ordered his companions to search the room. As for myself, the search was made extremely easy by the simplified costume I happened to be wearing.
I have had lately a few experiences of this sort, but the one in Brussels easily beat all the former ones. The police inspector in Berlin and the Turkish Custom House officers are as blind as bats and as superficial as amateurs compared with this man, who I honestly thought was Argus himself. He examined my luggage, my linen, my clothes, assured himself that nothing was concealed underneath the linings, looked for a double bottom in my bag, for receptacles in my watch-case, and produced from his roomy pockets a miniature hammer with which he made sure that the rather high heels of my boots were not hollow.
I suppose I could not help smiling while he was taking all this useless trouble, and the other man remarked that I need not make my position still worse by behaving insultingly to the representative of the Imperial police.
When he had finished searching my things, the polizeier talked to his chief, and said in German, which language they did not know I understood, that I had evidently concealed the documents somewhere in the room. Lying on the floor or climbing on the chairs, helping himself with an electric torch and with a sort of paper-knife which belonged to the arsenal of his professional belongings, he searched the carpet, the furniture, the bed, the shade of the electric light, the pipes of the bath—in a word, everything.
The man seemed so keen on his job that I really felt sorry I had not anything with me which would give him the pleasure of a sensational discovery. He reminded me of a ratter in which the gift of search is sure and instinctive.
When he thought he had found something behind the drawer of the dressing-table his eyes shone with delight, and his voice had suddenly an intonation of supreme joy. But he could only produce the catalogue of a furrier, evidently left by one of the former occupants of the room. Finally he had to give up searching, and the whole company departed, taking my passport and all my papers with them, promising another visit on the following morning, and informing me not to try and leave the hotel, or even my room, because such an attempt would be useless.
The next morning, at seven o'clock, only the two civilians came back, and told me to dress as quickly as possible, and follow them to the Kommandantur. I said I was quite ready to please them, but, to teach them a little patience, had a comfortable bath, polished my nails to the highest possible brightness, spent as long as possible in shaving, dressing, and having my petit déjeuner, while the chambermaid was packing my luggage.
When I followed the two polizeiern I said to her, "I hope you don't believe I have taken anybody's pocket-book?" "Certainly not, sir," she answered quite seriously. "All well-to-do people in Brussels have been taken to the Kommandantur this year; l'arrestation est très portée à présent."
Reassured by the assertion of the witty maid, which I acknowledged with an extra tip, I went with my two companions to a smart motor-car waiting for us outside. I feel indebted to the Germans for the only motor ride I managed to have in Brussels, no public or private car being allowed on the road, unless for military or police service.
At the police station a new and long interrogatory, followed by the seizure of all the money I had on me. Then I was confronted with a spy who had followed me about in my pilgrimage all over Belgium for five days. Not a single one of my moves had been missed from the moment I landed in Antwerp. A sort of long affidavit was drawn up containing all the accusations against me (I do not know exactly even now what they were), as well as my declaration and a complete list of the papers, books, and money I had with me. I asked permission to communicate with one of the neutral Consuls who are still in Brussels, but this was denied me, so I had to wait four or five hours, after which, having had a filthy German meal, always accompanied by my two polizeiern, in the canteen of an infantry regiment, I was taken to the Kommandantur.
The canteen was prepared for the celebration of the Kaiser's birthday; flags and pictures of the War Lord were all over the walls, and in a passage were piles of little boxes, sent by the Berlin population to the troops as a homage to the Kaiser, and containing sweets, tobacco, chocolates, and dreadful-looking handkerchiefs with the whole royal family printed on them.
The Kommandantur was in possession of the Palais de la Nation, and here I was kept waiting two hours. Then, I suppose, not to rid me of a good habit, I was searched once again, then asked to repeat exactly all that was in my passport. As I could not say the exact date of one or another visé at the different Consulates, I was told that I had stolen the passport and a lot of other nonsense of the kind.
I required all my large stock of patience and good humour to stand this trying time. It was getting dark, and I began to think that I should have to pass the night at the Kommandantur, when my adventure suddenly came to an utterly unromantic end by the intervention of a friend of mine who happens to be very influential in Brussels at the present moment. I feel rather ashamed about it. A stout colonel with the unavoidable iron cross, and the baldest head I have ever seen in my life, was interrogating me for the hundredth time, when he was suddenly put into the nicest of dispositions towards me by a letter sealed with a coat-of-arms I know quite well. It was brought to him on a silver tray by a Landsturm man.
The colonel began to apologise, saying that he felt certain I should understand things, and that really nothing would have happened "if you had not looked so extremely English."
I answered that I could not and did not wish to help my looks, and that I had thoroughly enjoyed the experience. "We happen to stay at the same hotel, I believe," he continued; "won't you dine with us to-night?"
I thought it was my turn to have a little of my own back, and, looking straight at him, I answered in my very best argot, "Ah ça non par example!" and I stepped out, enjoying thoroughly the servile bows of the two men who had searched me in the morning.
They gave me back my luggage, papers, and money, but in German notes instead of gold; and though I protested, as gold fetches in Belgium about twenty-seven francs per pound, they simply answered that no gold was allowed in Belgium, and I had to give in on this point. But I got any amount of pleasure, quite worth the money they made me lose, by telling them a few simple truths, which generally one cannot afford to tell to a German unless one happens to meet him somewhere out of reach of the police.
* * *
After my visit to the ruined towns of East Belgium I naturally expected to see in Brussels the depressed appearance and the lifeless look of the other parts of the country. I was therefore extremely surprised to find the town with all its shops and its theatres open, and with its everyday life in full swing.
The German authorities try to keep things as lively as possible in Brussels, and, up to a certain point, they succeed in doing so. Officers and men have received very special orders; they can do anything they like in the small provincial towns, but they must be fairly polite to the population in Brussels. As long as the capital has not been pillaged, burned, or shelled, the German Government thinks to have in its hands proof that no useless damage was done, and that the tragic happenings in the other towns were indirectly the fault of the "treacherous Belgians."
Another reason for this special treatment of Brussels is that though the Ambassadors of foreign States have left for Le Havre, a few members of the legations of neutral countries still remain in the town who would be compromising and official witnesses of any useless acts of cruelty. And this is why Brussels is the only Belgian town with a garrison of crack troops and well-to-do officers, the only town in which theatres are open (by special command of the Government of Brussels), and the only town in which restaurants and cafés keep open till eleven o'clock—some even till midnight, German time.
The question of time is really very curious. One of the first acts of the invaders was to impose, or rather try to do so, the Berlin hour on Belgium. Everybody stuck to the old Belgian time, which is an hour earlier than the German.
Then the Germans forced the sacristans of the different churches to put the steeple clocks back an hour, but, as by a miracle, the old clocks, many of which had been going for centuries, developed trouble of some kind or another, and suddenly stopped. Now it is only the Royal Palace and station clocks that mark German time; all the others have stopped or are undergoing endless repairs.
The time at which his watch is set is now a sign by which you can detect the sympathies of a person. When you sit in a tramcar or in a café, and somebody wishes to ask you a question, he glances first at your wrist, and, from the time of your watch, knows whether you are a friend or a foe.
The great majority of the Belgian population—I mean, of the Belgians who stuck to their homes, as should have been done by everybody—behave in a very dignified manner, and ignore the Germans almost completely. Nearly everybody, rich and poor, wears a Belgian rosette or King Albert's portrait in the buttonhole, and by so doing defy the Germans, who regularly rage at the sight.
A little story on this subject is often repeated in Brussels. A German officer asked a lady to take off the rosette she was wearing, but she refused.
"Very well, then," he said, "I will do it myself," and catching hold of the rosette he threw it on the floor and stamped his foot upon it. The lady stared at him contemptuously, and said, "After all, a rosette is much easier to take than Paris." She then walked away.
German soldiers have lately received the order not to bother about such trifles in Brussels, and everybody who wishes to do so can wear the colours of his country without serious consequences. I was really astonished at the appearance of some of the Brussels shops. Belgian flags and large pictures of the King and the Royal family, flanked by engravings of the Sovereigns of England and Russia, were shown in the windows, together with some clever caricatures and artistic etchings of "Bruxelles pendant l'occupation," a legend which means that it is hoped the occupation will cease as soon as possible.
To say at this moment that Belgium has been stricken by famine would be an exaggeration. Food is certainly scarcer than before the war, but the population is less, and consequently the prices have not risen extraordinarily.
At the restaurants the only dishes that are dearer are those that contain eggs; for the others, the higher cost to the caterers is made up for by smaller portions.
Bread is really the only thing that is dear. The quality, of course, varies, but the white, pure, wholesome bread formerly to be found everywhere as part of the excellent Belgium cooking, is no more.
From the Antwerp bread, which has now a funny taste as of dust, and the soft part of which is browny, full of dark spots, wet and granulous, to the brown soldier-like pain d'ammunition one gets in Tournai, from the maize and millet bread of Malines, to the still white but damp and curiously tasteless bread of Brussels—all the bread which was served to me during my Belgian trip showed clearly all the tricks used to provide the country with its indispensable daily bread. What in ordinary times would have been judged only fit for animals is now sold at very high prices and makes the base of the flour employed.
In places like Brussels, where a certain quantity of good flour is still obtainable at very high prices, the bread is made with a mixture of wheat, potato, and maize flour, but in most towns the wheat has been used up, and the bread has to be made without it.
In all the western parts of Belgium, all that remains of the old supply of corn is used for the wounded and the sick.
Pellagia, an old and almost forgotten ailment, caused by bad bread and rotten food, has reappeared in most of the country places where the food is worst. Some cases are really pathetic.
A doctor who is managing a hospital near Courtrai told me that it is impossible to get the good, healthy food indispensable in illness. Some cases of lemons and oranges for the Belgian hospitals which were specially allowed through the Italian frontier, in spite of the exportation bills, have been seized by the Germans.
Generally, German people and German hospitals in Belgium manage to get the very best food; the native inhabitants have to be content with what remains.
To eat, I will not say good, but passable bread, for instance, one must go to one of the establishments regarded as "safe" by the Germans, one of the establishments where the Germans feed, where they can do what they like and drink Munich beer. Such places are allowed to keep open an hour longer than the others.
German people have monopolised the fashionable restaurants, teashops, and best hotels in the town. The Belgian population has completely given up going into such establishments, and patronise only certain others which manage, more or less, to keep the Germans away.
The famous Café des Augustins, on the Boulevard Anspach, the manager of which has been plucky and clever enough to do so without giving the Government a pretext for shutting up the place, has crossed from his lists all German wines, liqueurs, and mineral waters. As the German Government has stopped the production of Belgian beer, in order to be able to send the stored oats and hops to Munich and to Pilsen, and to favour the sale of German beer in Belgium at fairly high prices, no more beer is sold in the establishment.
In the other restaurants, the Germanised ones, the new masters drink beer and champagne, sing, shout, and discuss the war.
All the smart tea-places of the capital like Matisse, the Palace, etc., have been monopolised by the German officers, and a lady will not visit them for anything on earth. "Ah non pas là; il y a trop de Boches!" declares a Bruxelloise invited to visit such a place.
It is really a trying time for a lady in Brussels, as well as all over Belgium. The German officers do not think it too base a thing to look up in the Kommandantur books the names of the young women whose husbands are either at the front or in a concentration camp in Germany; and then a real hunting campaign begins, generally ended by the lady leaving her own house and going to stay with relatives or friends. The German officer's way of paying attentions to a lady varies from following her about in the most persistent manner to sending her bouquets of flowers, and even to operating day and night perquisition of her house under some easily-found excuse, or without pretext at all.
I know some instances of such cases which are very common in Brussels. The father of one lady, who received such a visit from an officer accompanied by two soldiers at three o'clock in the morning, is a very highly placed Belgian official. He protested at the Kommandantur, but the answer he had was that the officer was perfectly right in so doing.
All German attempts to make friends with the population have failed.
I know of officers, once personal friends of Belgian families, who have tried in vain to revive the old acquaintance.
Of course, there are a few families who have received the German officers, and these are consequently in favour. In a family of parvenus which hopes to take a better place in Brussels society if the German occupation continues, the Kaiser's birthday was celebrated with a dinner for officers, followed by a dance, permission being gladly granted by the Kommandantur.
But Brussels society, needless to say, has completely ostracised these people. Even the Germans at heart despise them.
"We go to the house," said the officer who told me of the Kaiser's birthday-party, "because we have nowhere else to go, but we know perfectly well they only do it because they think it will improve their social position. They are not exactly the kind of people I shall like to shake hands with when the war is over."
* * *
There is one part of Brussels which has never been properly occupied—the part which lies on the other side of the port and of the Bassin Vergote, the so-called Marolle, the East End of the Belgian capital. During the first month of the occupation the Kommandantur tried to establish a proper military police service there, as in the other quarters of the town; but each night several of the men in the patrol disappeared, and often a full patrol would meet a similar end.
The Brussels apaches have always been armed with long thin knives, and they took no notice of the order to give up all arms to the police. As the high powers of Berlin did not want a wholesale imprisonment or the destruction of the entire quarter, which would have been the only remedy, the Kommandantur has compromised. The Marolle is occupied during the day, and free during the night. Patrols go through it in daylight, but when evening comes they cross the water and retire into the old "Luna Park," now converted into a large prison and barracks.
The high and smartest part of the town is completely given up to the Germans. The Palais de la Nation, and the Palais du Roe, the beautiful Palais des Beaux Arts, and the colossal Palais de Justice, are the headquarters of the German Government of Belgium. New German inscriptions tell the new uses of the palaces, and, what is rather important, no reference is made to a temporary government of Belgium; the inscriptions simply say, "German Empire—Government of the Belgian Provinces."
Near the Palais de Justice, which occupies a dominating position on a hill almost in the centre of the town, twenty large siege guns have been placed, and near them artillery officers and men connected with the Kommandantur by a camp telephone are ready to pour on the quiet town death and destruction should the necessity of subduing riots arise.
The most important monuments, art galleries, and churches are said to be mined, and the German authorities do not deny the rumour.
On the boulevards and down the beautiful Avenue Louise, at the Cinquantenaire, and at the Bois de la Cambre, generally full of smart people, of horse-riders, and of carriages and motor-cars, there are now only old Landsturm soldiers drilling and very young officers riding, often accompanied by ladies, who, even in this the smartest of sports, cannot get rid of a certain Teutonic awkwardness.
The German nation has always been celebrated for her immoderate liking for issuing long and complicated notices, warnings which are possible only in Germany because in no other country would people take the trouble to read them.
In Belgium this mania has reached its highest possible point. On the ruins of the dead cities and on the trees in the open country, on the gates of the gardens, and on the milestones of the country roads, everywhere where there is space enough, the German Government has posted notices, printed in three languages—German, Flemish, and French—headed with the German eagle and signed by the Governor-General.
Brussels is covered with a sort of incrustation of old and new official notices; notices about closing time for shops and cafés, about grouping in the streets, about meetings in clubs, about drinking spirits, about singing forbidden songs, about buying or selling forbidden stuff, about keeping arms, photographic cameras, or maps, about detaining gold instead of giving it up to the banks, about giving hospitality to refugees or foreigners, about everything on earth.
The list of things "verboten" would probably take more than a full page, but what is most insisted upon and is the subject of five or six different notices is the introduction of foreign papers into Belgium and the sale, or possession, of newspapers of any kind besides the ones sold openly in Belgium, a full list of which is given.
These are: a few Belgian papers, naturally issued under the vigilant eye of the most particular of censors; some German papers, not all of them, as many are considered much too advanced to be allowed into the hands of Belgian people; and a Rotterdam sheet, which has the privilege of being the only foreign journal allowed into Belgium, a privilege more apparent than real, as the paper is notoriously in German hands.
It will easily be understood how the Belgian population feels more than anything else this complete lack of real news, and how eager they are for the information which is brought in by the few refugees who succeed in going back or by the few foreign papers they manage to smuggle in at great risk and great expense.
The other papers, the ones which are allowed, print the most fantastic news. I was in Brussels the day of the Zeppelin raid on the British coast; the aircraft, according to the news for Belgian consumption, reached London and dropped bombs all over the metropolis. Every day or two a great victory is claimed on either front, and the official reports of foreign countries published in the papers are only mutilated and distorted reductions of the real ones.
To be found in possession of forbidden papers is extremely dangerous.
A gentleman belonging to one of the best Brussels families was given two months' concentration camp for translating articles from The Times, and one of his office clerks, who got hold of the translations and typed them and sold them, had to serve a six months' sentence. In spite of all this, I managed to get a copy of The Times nearly every day, paying for it two francs fifty, which is certainly a fair price, but not too high considering the difficulty of introducing it into Belgium, and that it was generally only two days old.
Up to about two months ago people would gladly pay twenty-five francs for a copy of the paper; refugees and Dutch people used to take it in at great risk, but now with an admirable sense of adaptability, the German soldiers, Custom House officers, and railway employees have organised this delicate service.
They get The Times or the Figaro for twopence at the Dutch frontier and sell it again to some agent in Brussels or straight to the public at a nice profit. One must, of course, be extremely careful in buying papers offered on sale by such people, as this is one of the favourite victim-hunting systems of the numberless spies of the Kommandantur.
In a difficult moment like the present one the Belgian Press, or the part of it which stuck to its place and kept independent from German influence, has assumed a very dignified attitude.
La Belgique, Le Bruxellois, La Patrie, etc., publish the different communiqués, French, German, English, and Russian, but never forget to put, as an undertitle, "As transmitted to us by the Censor." Very often the papers come out with large blank spaces, the whole or part of an article having been censored.
At a famous restaurant near the "Halles," which is the meeting-place of journalistic and literary folk in Brussels, I met an old friend, now editor of a large Brussels paper.
He thought it was his duty not to leave the town and to try to give the Belgian public as truthful news as possible about the war, but he admitted the task he had assumed was almost impossible.
All communications with foreign countries have been interrupted, and the papers must depend completely on the censor for news. The few items of correspondence which he could manage to get through from England and France were not allowed to be printed, and quotations from foreign papers are strictly forbidden.
The German Government tried often with his paper, and with all the others of a certain importance, to convert them into Germanophile papers, offering large sums of money and great advantages of every kind. Such offers were naturally refused, and now the Germans have founded a new paper, the title of which sounds very Belgian, while the editor and staff have been carefully selected amongst people who are, at least as far as their name goes, thoroughly Belgian.
This is now the leading organ of the Germanophil movement.
"Many Belgians in London?" asked my friend, after a pause.
"Too many," I could not help answering.
"Oh, we know, we know. Twenty per cent. are perhaps real refugees, and the others are slackers, or people who fancy that, after all, a season in London is the best way of dealing with the crisis.
"I wonder if the young men who left Belgium on the pretext of enlisting, and who are now 'acting the referee' in London, know that we consider them a disgrace to our country?
"If a man cannot fight with our King on the last bit of Belgian soil, his duty is to stick to his town, to his village, or to his country house. Especially if he is a man of wealth, and most Belgians now in London are fairly well off, there is plenty for him to do here."
The very same thing was repeated to me by hundreds of people while I was in Belgium.
A lady who ten or twelve years since has spent every winter in her beautiful villa in Bordighera, and who, for the first time, did not this year leave Brussels, where she is managing an emergency hospital for children, said to me: "When you go back to England, please tell the English that we Belgians do not want to be judged by those of us who are now in London enjoying themselves in theatres and night clubs. What they spend in an evening would be sufficient to keep one of our starving families for a week. We know, from some refugees who have come back, how even a number of young men are enjoying in England an idle life and a free and large hospitality. Such people should not be surprised if, when the war is over and they are back in Belgium, they are considered as outcasts. We shall not have any room for them in our society. They have deserted Belgium when she was most in need of them; they have made us look like cowards in the eyes of the country which has been helping us most gallantly, and they will not be surprised, I think, to be ostracised by the rest of their countryfolk.
"This war," continued the lady, who bears one of the oldest and best names of Belgium, "this war has produced in our country a new form of socialism—a socialism which has nothing in common with the theories of Bebel or Marx, but which seems to derive its origin from the Commandments of the Bible.
"I know of ladies who would not, before the war, have thought it in themselves to do any such useful work as looking after entire families of refugees; others have been converted by the circumstances of war into efficient sick nurses, relief organisers, and even into cooks for our kitchens for the poor. I know of families who would have shivered at the idea of having a stranger in their home, especially if that stranger happened to be of low class, who are now giving hospitality to whole families; I know of middle-aged gentlemen who almost every week risk their lives to go into Holland to get letters from soldiers fighting at the front and to bring back hope to hundreds of families. These and our soldiers are the true Belgians."
Poor people often told me the same thing. "Do you think we are of the kind to allow the Germans to turn us out of our own houses?" a little Belgian woman asked me. She was living with her five children in a little ruined cottage near Liége, while her husband was fighting at the front. A piece of shell remained jutting from a wall of the little house, which had newspapers at the windows instead of glass.
"I did not bother to have new glass put in just yet," said the little woman, smiling; "first of all because we have no money to spare, and also because we expect to see more fighting soon; at least, we hope so. We know it will be hell when the Germans are pushed back, but we are waiting anxiously for that moment. Ah! sir, this is not life; this is worse than all being dead," she ended, kissing the fair head of her last-born—born since the Germans came.
In many, many towns did I hear this very same hope expressed by all kinds and conditions of people and in the same manner: "When are we going to get rid of them?"
"Get rid of them" does not mean only that the Belgians desire to reassume the dignity of a free nation, have their own rulers, nor see any more pointed helmets, but also that they want to be able to start business again, to live, to eat, to be free in every sense of the word.
The subject of a country which has not suffered invasion for centuries and centuries can hardly realise what all this means.
* * *
Perhaps the most intolerable portion of the occupants are the civilians, who have come down in big numbers, following in a week or two the German Army. They have joined the other Germans, those who have been preparing for years the ground for the future invasion. Some are occupied at the Kommandantur, some are organising the railway service, but most belong to the secret service and to the police offices.
The German waiters of the Palace, the Metropole, the Cecil, and all other big hotels in Brussels appear to have been working their very best for the Fatherland before the war began. Now they have left their humble jobs, thrown away their mask, and found new employment with the central police. In Brussels there are any number of such people, who now carry themselves proudly with a white, black, and red armlet and a pistol-case bulging beneath their coats on the left hip.