1. Aggravations.
A general remark occurs to us at once: it is that the Germans have failed in their object. For instead of exasperating us to the point of forcing us to commit some imprudence, which they would have been obliged to repress, they simply made sure of our profound contempt. To tell the truth, each fresh persecution makes us furious for a day; but the sense of irony soon regains the upper hand, and then we have only one anxiety: to make their latest form of vexation ridiculous by all the means in our power.
Nothing better shows the contrast between the German mentality and the Belgian than the manner in which we have obeyed the decree concerning the German time.
After only a week's occupation the inhabitants of Andenne were obliged to set their clocks to the German time. At Namur, too, this was required from the 31st August. Elsewhere the German time was enforced only at a much later date, and only in respect of the clocks in cafés. Many cabaret-keepers merely stopped their clocks; others had fitted a second small hand, an hour in retard of the first; others wrote beneath the clock "German Time," or even "This clock is an hour fast." In the window of a Brussels watchmaker, in the midst of many clocks which indicated more or less precisely the German time, was one which was specially labelled "Correct Time"—and that one told, of course, the Belgian time. In short, every one did what he could to avoid letting his customers regard the German time as the true time. And really, if one has adopted, as is the case in Germany and in Belgium, the system of hourly segments, it is obvious that Belgium ought to form part of the segment of Western Europe, not part of that of Eastern Europe. It is, therefore, solely in a spirit of aggravation that Germany forces her time upon us; and she is fully aware of this, as her public notices are always careful to speak of "German time," not of "Central European time."
Treatment inflicted upon Belgian Ladies.
What do you think of the additional suffering inflicted on ladies condemned to several weeks' imprisonment for having conveyed letters from Belgian soldiers to the parents of those soldiers, or for speaking a little too boldly before an officer, or for some other crime of a like nature? It is a delicate idea to shut them up in common with half a score of other prisoners, in a room containing no convenience but a pail furnished with a cover. They are lucky if the company does not include some very dubious characters.
We need not insist: these are aggravations, not serious at bottom, but their irritating nature can only be fully appreciated when one suffers them daily, or hears them described by friends or relatives who have been their victims.
After the examples of collective and impersonal malfeasance dictated by some high officer desirous of justifying the fair fame of Kultur, we will take those cases in which the personality of the author clearly reveals itself, and, let us say at once, in which this personality instantly excites the disgust and indignation of all merely civilized persons.
The Germans reached Capelle-au-Bois on the 30th August. But on the 31st they were repulsed by Belgian troops. On the 4th September they returned in force and forced back the Belgians; not without difficulty, however, for they had many killed, of whom nineteen were buried at Capelle-au-Bois. With the Belgian troops as they withdrew went all the inhabitants of the village, leaving behind them only a few helpless old people. In this all but empty village, where no one was left to offer them the least resistance, the Germans hastened to kill several inhabitants—four, it is believed. Then, under the orders of Captain von Puttkammer, the strong-boxes were broken open, the objects of value packed and sent to Germany, and the wines carried to the bank of the canal and into the houses occupied by the officers. On the evening of the 4th September the troops set fire to the village. Thanks to incendiary pastilles and benzine pumps, the fire spread rapidly; 235 houses were burned of the three hundred which formed the heart of the village. So far all was as usual; but here is the characteristic fact. The better to enjoy the spectacle the troops spent the evening on the bank of the canal; there they organized a little orgie, over eight hundred empty bottles being afterwards discovered.
At the same period the Germans established a few miles further to the west, at Londerzeel, pillaged and then burned the house of the notary, M. Van Hover. They had tried in vain to open the safe, so, furious at their failure, they poured benzine into it and set fire to it, procuring at least the satisfaction of knowing that all the papers would be reduced to ashes.
What are we to think of the officer who, lodging in the house of a curé in the province of Antwerp, found it amusing to tear pages from the books which formed his host's library, or to gum them together, so that in seeking to separate them the owner himself would tear them? Note that it was no clown who devised this kindly pastime, for he took care to choose, in the Latin books, the pages bearing the most important passages.[48]
Filthy Amusements.
Others preferred to defile things. When in August and September 1914 we were told that the Germans were amusing themselves by depositing ordure in their beds we refused to believe in such perversion. But a walk through Eppeghem, Sempst, and Weerde was enough to enlighten us. Not only had they emptied all the houses, rich or poor; not only had they taken the trouble to smash into quite small pieces all the glass and crockery they could not carry away; not only, in the grocers' shops, had they delighted themselves by mixing snuff with the butter, and tacks with the cloves, and pepper with the flour, but all the bedding bore the malodorous traces of their visit.
Let it not be imagined that this mania of beastliness is peculiar to the common soldiers. The officers who spent the night of the 19th August, 1915, at Cortenburg, between Louvain and Brussels, were infected by the same Kultur. In a certain house they carefully laid the table in the dining-room, without forgetting the serviettes, and then deposited a souvenir on every plate. In another house in Cortenburg they chose, as a receptacle, the tall hat of the householder. In the château of Malderen (Brabant), having taken all that pleased them and broken the rest into small pieces, they opened a card-table, deposited their excrement there, and carefully closed it again.
Another manifestation of the scatological mania: Many hundreds of German Army surgeons met in congress during the Easter holidays of 1915, in Brussels. On the last day of the congress, Wednesday, the 7th April, a banquet was held, on the premises of the Palais de Justice. On the Thursday morning it was discovered that the surgeons had left souvenirs behind them; they had evacuated the surplus of food and liquor consumed by the three natural orifices, and had chosen for their purpose the most beautiful halls of the Palais. Frankly, we should not have expected this from the doctors; it is true, however, that they were German military doctors.
A man amuses himself as he can—or, to put it more plainly, according to his mentality. After all, these beastly habits, disgusting as they are, are not those whose results are most disagreeable.
There are others who seek violent contrasts. Thus, at Houtem, while the church was burning, on the 13th September, 1914, a military band was playing its liveliest selections at a few yards' distance. At Monceau-sur-Sambre, on the 22nd August, officers were playing the piano in the château of the demoiselles Bourriez, on the Trazegnies road, when the soldiers had already lit the upper floors. At Louvain, on the 25th August, 1914, in a café near the railway-station, soldiers set fire to the upper floor without warning the proprietor, and remained below, where they kept a mechanical piano going. They were thus able to enjoy the despairing expressions of the inmates when they discovered that they could no longer hope to save anything.