Part 2

On 22nd August, the same amount, save that the bread was reduced to 20,000 kilos, with an addition of 20,000 kilos of flour.

On 23rd August, everything in like quantities was again yielded at the army’s command, with the exception of bread, which 30,000 kilos of flour replaced.

As this severe drainage threatened to reduce to famine the 800,000 inhabitants of Brussels, Monsieur Max informed the German authorities he could not vouch for the people’s submission if such exactions continued. The occupying Government thereupon agreed, over the Governor’s signature, to make no more requisitions during a period of eight days. But the following day new demands were presented, and an attempt, resisted by Monsieur Max, was made to set aside a contract which the army chiefs declined to recognize as controlling their actions.

In regard to the war indemnity, Monsieur Max arranged with the Government to pay it off by instalments by the 30th of September. Payments were made regularly, and of the 50,000,000 there remained due but 4,400,000 to be paid when, on the 24th of September, von Luettwitz announced that no further reimbursement would be made by the army for food-stuffs requisitioned, as the war indemnity had not been paid within the time originally specified!

But my object is not to go into these details, or to depict, more than is necessary, the darker side of Belgium’s martyrdom under German dominion. The world knows enough of such matters and will probably know more before these recollections appear. Tragedy and sorrow, moreover, have been heard, seen, felt _ad nauseam_ by every dweller in the occupied country. No account of those years can escape their dominating note of tragedy, but all such events herein given are limited to those not generally known, whose truth has been personally ascertained.

The invasion of a capital by enemy troops had always seemed to me the culminating tragedy of war, and one likely to be rife with stirring incidents. How little like my preconceived idea was this silent and awesome mastery—this slowly-moving stream of concentrated force, passing between those walls of ashen-white faces, whence thousands of wide eyes spoke the voiceless misery and amazement of a people betrayed! The warrior’s pride was not lacking, but a pride less admirable even than that of the criminal forces led by Napoleon into capitals which he had overwhelmed.

But why connect with this ignoble victory the supremely evil Corsican’s name? Napoleon, like Alexander and Hannibal, was superb almost to the end. But William II., devoid of magnetism, devoid of the human understanding and tact so essential to a great leader, sought to follow in his steps with no finer attribute than long-nourished brute force and meanly-developed craftiness. He utterly failed to recognize that no number of cannon, no number, however stupendous, of enslaved legions, could replace Napoleon’s understanding.

From Germany’s regiments of triumphant treachery, advancing through Brussels, no glance of comprehension or compassion met the people’s wide-eyed gaze. Only one sentiment could be read in the eyes looking sternly upon them from under shining Prussian helmets—a vainglorious contempt for the race that had so sublimely resisted their unjust and inexorable demands.

The scene, viewed from the standpoint of one bred in a country long since rid of barbarism, appeared strangely anachronistic and theatrical—like the blazing pageantry of a stage, briefly holding the attention of an enlightened community which would presently ring down the curtain and return to real and serious occupations. The leaders—young men, for the most part, of noble families; men whose brain and morals had been cramped, since infancy, into the narrow circumference of their eagle-topped helmets—sat their horses in the heroic pose of a stage Siegfried. Their polished armour and ornaments reflected heaven’s sun as meretriciously as do those of Wagner’s characters the glare of the footlights. Each one appeared inwardly inflated by a sense of individual world-power, by an intoxicating impression that in him was revived the spirit of conquering Rome—and, with it, the right to tread under his spurred foot the wan faces his absurdly proud glance surveyed. Then came the worn troops following on foot—they who had borne the brunt of conflict—devoid of ornament, trudging along at the horses’ heels, obedient offenders of the people who despised them; hoodwinked slaves, persuaded they were serving their country, while inflicting and enduring the tortures of hell merely to enhance imperial pride and save the despotic throne so long founded upon their blind submission.

III

After that tragic day, Brussels came more and more under the tyranny of the “iron fist” by which the Kaiser once boasted he would win the world-power unattained by other and far more capable enemies of peace. German soldiers swarmed through the streets, always hurrying to fulfil urgent business of their impatient leaders, who, on their way to overwhelm France, panted to thrust the sword of ruin deeper into hapless Belgium. During those first weeks of the occupation the city appeared obsessed by a restless mass of grey-robed energy. Every unit of the vast armies seemed infected by this passion. The streets fairly roared with frenzy-driven automobiles, enormous war-like things, sombre as mighty death-machines, mostly torpedo-shaped, driven, with entire disregard for the safety of pedestrians, through streets ridded of all traffic that might hamper their way. The harsh or piercing cries of their horns never ceased; nor, when an officer of high rank was the occupant, the gay bugle notes, clear and triumphantly joyous, which so racked the aching nerves and hearts of every native. I think no one then in Brussels, who took the invasion to heart, will ever forget that bright, repeated melody so galling to those whose dear ones had perished in the unequal struggle.

The _voyous_ of the rue Haute districts, however, found a means of shaming it to silence, after the great repulse at the Marne. They put words to the melody and sang them at full voice in echo, each time the bugle announced the presence of a high official. The words, which fitted perfectly, were: “_C’est loin à Paris!_”

Presently, it was heard no more, and only then, it seemed, did the stunned Belgians begin to awake and take some interest in life. They could do little for their wounded; for all hospitals, as well as public buildings, were seized by the enemy to house Germany’s mutilated slaves, or serve as resting-places for troops. All the comfort many of these latter enjoyed was a litter of straw laid on the floors of corridors.

I was obliged to step over their sleeping and evidently exhausted forms when, seeking a pass one day to go to our villa, ten miles from Brussels, I was erroneously led by a dull-witted soldier, who should not have admitted me, to the top floor of the post-office building. There I saw his commanding officer—who (it turned out) had nothing whatever to do with the giving of passes! Though it was after midday, the men lay sleeping like animals all along the hallways, and their chief, roused from repose on a sofa in a separate room, was angrily struggling into his great boots when I was announced. His rage at being disturbed, but more at having me appear before he was ready to receive me with impressive dignity, was vented in a volley of abusive language hurled at the wretched subordinate.

The situation was indeed rather embarrassing for a leader—though a minor one—of the power-proud Prussian army. With feet clad only in grey woollen socks, hair roughened, and eyes red and heavy with sleep, he certainly presented a rather comical picture, crimson with anger and bellowing insults at the man, whom he ordered from the room. Of me he took not the slightest notice until the boots were on, and during that interval of silence, shut up as I was alone with him in a place where, as I saw at once, I had no proper excuse for intruding, my one desire was to find some means of escape before he should notice me; for I expected anything but polite treatment at his hands.

However, apart from a certain amount of silly boasting, and a rather superior expression of regret that he could not provide the desired pass, he said nothing really objectionable in answer to my surprising appeal, although his expression showed he had no very flattering idea of my intelligence. On learning my nationality, and how wrong direction had led me to him, the arrogance of his manner softened considerably: “You will not be able to go to your villa at present,” he said on learning where it was, “our armies are now in that locality; and even if you were permitted to go, it would not be safe.”

“But the house may be destroyed,” I replied, “and there are things I value there which no money could replace.”

He shrugged and returned, with mock sympathy quickly followed by vanity, “_Schade!_—but no exceptions can be made. Others have lost their treasures, and many more are likely to. War does not consider individuals.”

“But why _is_ there war in this country?” I ventured. “What on earth is your excuse for coming here to ruin a peaceful nation?”

“Belgium was given her chance to avoid war—she would not take it; that is not our fault!”

I longed to tell him a few unflattering truths, but the fact of being four stories above the street, with hundreds of armed men within call, forced me to limit my reply to: “That depends how one understands fault; certainly the Belgians were not at fault.”

“They were; they were siding with England and France. Stupid people! What will they gain by making an enemy of Germany? The Allies must yield to us; then where will Belgium be?”

“And if they do not yield?”

He laughed softly: “_Ach!_ There is no question of that! Are we not rushing on France already? In three weeks or less we shall be in Paris, and shortly after that we shall have England at our mercy.”

I forced a smile, though inwardly his confidence made me tremble. “Aren’t you counting a little too much on your successful invasion of a very small and unprepared country? England and France may also be unprepared, but they have greater resources and more time to collect them than poor Belgium had.”

“_Ach, bewahr!_” he replied scornfully, “they can never resist our armies. When we take Paris, England’s morale will be broken; she will not be able to raise an army!”

“If you take it!”

“No, _when_ we take it!” he replied, with quite a genial smile. “Don’t deceive yourself; we Germans do not attempt things we are not sure of attaining. Everything is planned to the smallest detail. But tell me, are you in sympathy with the Allies?”

“I am a neutral.”

“_Ach, so!_... Are all Americans strictly neutral?”

“They are supposed to be.”

He eyed me thoughtfully before saying: “I think they are jealous of us, like England—like all the world! This war must prove Germany’s supremacy and put an end to all that!”

As this interview took place some little time before the battle of the Marne, I must own to a very unneutral pang of resentment, mingled with dread lest his boasting might prove well founded. But, galling as it was, I was convinced the man spoke only what had been drilled into him, and not his own sentiments. He was quite a young fellow, neither aristocratic in appearance nor so self-important as are most of his class. His round blue eyes often softened with the wistful musing of a mind not altogether sure of what he boasted, nor why he was there—what was leading men only slightly more enslaved than he, to fight for an object none could define. Later on he recited some of the horrors he had witnessed on his way from Liège—the so-called legitimate horrors of war, not those relating to civilians—and spoke almost with tears of certain friends he had lost in the conflict. Thus softened, he invited me to have coffee with him in his den, and pressingly repeated the invitation all the way down those interminable, man-encumbered flights of stairs which I made for as soon as politeness permitted. My entering of the room of an officer in command, to obtain a pass which only the administrative authorities could give, might very easily have been understood as an attempt to spy, or attributed to some other equally dangerous motive. Consequently, I could only be grateful, when again at liberty, that my blundering guide had not led me into the presence of a success-drunken superior officer, who might have exhibited his native bullying tendencies when he found me at his mercy. My chance host, it must be acknowledged, was not of this type, and only in regard to Belgium did he reveal that tyranny toward weakness so characteristic of most Prussians in authority.

IV

The lower-class Belgian’s horror of the invaders grew daily, as more and more harrowing tales of their atrocities came to us from regions through which their armies were rushing. “_Schrechlichkeit_” was attaining its object at a bitter price to the poor unreasoning peasants, who saw not only those dear to them slain for no apparent cause, but also their superiors, priests, prominent townsmen, and even women and children. Stories reached us of such unparalleled ugliness that many refused to credit them, and only when like crimes were committed in and about Brussels could we believe modern humanity capable of such deeds. These are now more or less known to the outer world; although doubtless many done in secret will never come to light, save when the victims, at the Last Judgment, add their voice of condemnation to those of innocent men, women, and children sent to sudden and ghastly death on the _Lusitania_. But that revolting crime had not yet happened, to inflame neutral minds in Brussels, which, until convinced of those done in Belgium, were genuinely neutral.

So unbiased, indeed, was the feeling among them that even the violation of Belgium was looked on by some as an ugly action, but not wholly damning according to war morals. I heard neutral men, who admired Germany, even seek to excuse it as a daring and possibly necessary “strategic move.” But less than three weeks after the fall of Liège, these very men were among the bitterest and most outspoken haters of the race they had tried to defend. Civilized sentiment was so outraged by the wrongs heaped upon Belgians that several Americans, Dutch, and other neutrals undertook, for their own satisfaction, to investigate certain awful incidents related. When they were convinced that these were not only true, but in some cases too mildly depicted, their neutrality fled in a storm of rage.

The terror which these acts temporarily roused in the peasantry was revealed to me the day I ventured out, by bicycle, to our villa in the vicinity of Wavre. No other means of conveyance being available, I discovered, after considerable search, an old wheel unearthed from the depths of a merchant’s cellar—one of the few secreted to escape requisition. No trains were running and no trams, and offer of high payment failed to tempt the drivers of such few miserable hack-horses as remained after the taxi-cabs had been seized. But, by starting early in the morning, it was possible to make the trip by wheel, pack, and return before nightfall. So, having obtained a German pass from Government headquarters the day after my visit to the sleepy officer at the post office, I attached a small American flag to the handle-bar, and started forth at six a.m. through the deserted Bois, and thence to still more deserted country roads. There was no traffic in those days save occasional German military cars, and no sign of human or any other life on the roads. The Belgians were then for the most part keeping indoors, in some cases through fear of the Germans, in others because, commerce and business being dead, they had nothing to tempt them out; therefore, until I reached an outlying village, I met no one to direct me. Here, while coasting down the main road, flanked by modest peasant abodes, I was startled by seeing two men rush out, and wave frantically to stop me.

“You can’t proceed!” exclaimed one as I dismounted. “Come quickly into the house! _Vite! Vite!_ They are there, just beyond!”

“Who?” I asked, amazement at this hysterical excitement making me forget the cause of their terror.

“_Les Allemands!_ Come—be quick; they will appear at any moment!”

If a tribe of hungry cannibals had been in the vicinity, their agitation could not have been greater. Women were shrieking warnings from windows, children peering terrified from behind curtains, and the two men literally trying to drag me indoors.

“But I _must_ go on!” I exclaimed. “I have a pass and am an American!”

“_C’est égal!_ they respect nothing!” was the reply. “They will shoot you down! They will rob and tear you to bits! _Ne savez-vous pas ce que c’est qu’un Boche?_ He is a beast without reason! He stops at nothing! Think only what our innocents have suffered!”

“And my old father, who did no wrong!” wailed a woman from the window.

“They are burning the village beyond!” cried another.

Then several at once: “They killed my brother.... They cut off the hands of little children;... they burned the farm of So-and-so and murdered his daughter!... _Et mon fils! mon fils!_ the father of a family! he lies, buried with twenty others in a heap, at Tamines!”

All that was said I could not hear, indeed did not try to, and being anxious to go on, sought to escape the two men’s kindly attention. When they were at last persuaded to resign me to the predicted doom, I sped on down the hill to a cross-road, and, turning to the right, saw a moving mass of troops rapidly approaching in the direction I was obliged to take—on foot, as the road mounted too steeply to permit of riding. The troop gained on me so rapidly that their heavy tramp and rough breathing were soon audible. Before we reached the level they were striding along within arm’s reach, line after line of dusty, perspiring, war-brutalized men, pressing on to new scenes of slaughter. The mounted officers in command glanced at me, noted the flag which then had not been forbidden, and returned their eager gaze to the distance beyond, evidently controlled but by one idea. _Haste_—that was the motto of these frenzy-driven legions, ordered to rush into France despite all obstacles, over the living and the dead, treading even, if need be, their own fellows under foot!

The soldiers were the heavy, stalwart men of the first German army, trained and hardened for war—conscious machines of destruction, who appeared to have forgotten they were human. In their faces one saw only an animal-like, unquestioning obedience that had become, through long domination, the very essence of their strength, the will actuating their movements, their thought, their very life; “Not to reason why; but to do and die,” seemed branded on their souls. In none of the many different army contingents that later came to Brussels, either allied or German, was this strange, dogged, unhuman and unthinking obedience so strikingly visible. While watching them and noting their expression of unintelligent, inexorable determination to push on according to supreme command, the impression came to me that, had I fallen and lain disabled in the road, they would have marched over me as unhesitatingly as they trod the dust.

At the hotel where we were staying, a party of English nurses were putting in a weary time waiting vainly for the wounded. One of these had offered to accompany me on the trip to our villa, but at the last moment was forbidden to do so by her superior. The evening of my return from the expedition, which proved successful and less eventful than predicted, I told them that it had been accomplished without the difficulties expected by their matron. “Really? So glad!” replied the one referred to, evidently regretting that she had been denied this chance to relieve her dull days.

They were a rather disconsolate lot, very smart-looking, in their pretty nursing uniforms, but bored by enforced idleness. More than one told me, with true British spirit, that she would prefer to be in the most dangerous section of the front rather than pass another idle day at the expense of those they had come to serve. Later on this wish was gratified, and no doubt each of them has more than repaid the cost of their brief period of sloth.

A certain man, also residing at the hotel, was constantly haunting these women, who complained of his persistent attentions and efforts to draw them into conversation. He posed as an Englishman, and, before England entered the war, had been in that country. But his appearance was not English, and his voice had a guttural accent that made me suspect him of being a German spy—a suspicion that I later had reason to believe was well founded. He had the room next to mine, with a communicating door, through which one could hear voices even when lowered. Visitors constantly came there, mostly women who spoke French along the corridor to the servant directing them, but, once in his room with the door closed, spoke German, and usually took care that no word should be heard outside. But one day a woman entered so early that the knock at his door awakened me; I then heard low voices and the crisp rattle of papers. Presently another woman was shown into the room; and she, evidently agitated, spoke in German loud enough for me to hear in my bed these significant sentences: “_Ach Gott_, you are confident, but I am not! It is said the Russians mean to make of it a religious war. In that case it will go hard with Germany.” The man’s reply was too low to be heard, and she continued: “To be sure; but look at this.” A sound came of paper like that of a letter being opened. At this moment the telephone-bell rang; the man answered it in French, and his words came to me clearly: “Hallo! Yes. She is here with me now; I have seen the letter.... _Pas du tout!_ Do nothing until I see you.... Yes, he is a Belgian, but his _wife_ is English—there are two sons; one got away the day the Germans entered.... Inquire at the Anglo-American club, Toison d’Or.... _Oh zut!_—tell him I shall be at your place at eleven and——” The rest was drowned by someone’s pet dog barking in the corridor—a soldier’s dog, as it proved afterwards.

On descending for dinner that evening, my companion and I were joined, while awaiting the lift, by two German soldiers—probably the orderlies of officers lodged on the same _étage_. With them was a fox terrier, doubtless the one that interrupted my eavesdropping. It approached to be caressed, which led me to ask the soldiers if they intended to take it to the front.

“_Gewiss!_” replied one, rather aggressively; “he will come with us to Paris and then to _London_!”

The emphasis on the last word betrayed that he thought me English, and the intended taunt angered me.

“Really?” I replied; “evidently you think I am English!”

He smiled shamefacedly, and blurted naïvely: “Aren’t you?”

I coldly told him my nationality, and added: “But if I _were_ English your boast would not trouble me. You are still a long way from Paris, and even if you ever _should_ get there, you would not remain long. And as for London—you might more easily get to heaven!”

They received this sally with confident laughter, and left the lift, one repeating significantly, emphasizing the words with an upraised finger: “You’ll see! You’ll see!”