CHAPTER XIV
THE GREAT TRIAL
When the nephew of King Leopold, Prince Albert, became king of the Belgians under the name of Albert I, he certainly never imagined that a day would come when the very existence of his country would be put at stake by the felony of one of the powers which were pledged to defend Belgian neutrality.
The first years of the new reign went on peacefully. Albert I devoted his attention particularly to social and economic affairs, but he did not forget the problems of Belgian’s defense. In 1912, thanks to the efforts and the help of the Belgian Premier, Baron Charles de Brogueville, he obtained a new army bill, which considerably reinforced the strength of the Belgian army. Two years had hardly elapsed when the Great Trial came! On August 2, 1914, the German Minister to Brussels appeared at the Belgian Foreign Office, and presented on behalf of his government a “very confidential” note, asking passage through Belgium for the German troops on their way to France. Twelve hours were granted to the Belgian government for a reply.
The night of August 2, 1914, was a terrible night for the King and his ministers. They had to decide upon the future, on the existence of their country. None wavered; they decided to remain loyal to their pledge and to oppose to the German invaders “the force of arms.”
The Belgian army then hardly counted 115,000 men; they had no big guns, hardly any machine guns and, as a consequence of the army bill of 1912, everything was in full process of reorganization. Nevertheless, the Belgian government did not hesitate.
On August 2, at 7 o’clock in the morning, a man calmly brought to the German Minister at Brussels the answer to the German ultimatum: the reply was a categorical refusal to let the German army pass through Belgium. On August 4, the army of General von Emmich, some 80,000 men, tried to take the fortified position of Liège by surprise. But the 30,000 Belgians of General Leman defended their hastily constructed trenches so well that many German regiments beat a hasty retreat. Panic already prevailed in the German town of Aix-la-Chapelle, where the news spread that the Belgians were invading German soil! However, in the midst of the confusion, a German column, under the command of Ludendorff, who then won his first laurels of the war, succeeded in breaking through the Belgian defenses. On the morning of August 7, the city of Liège was occupied by the enemy.
The Belgian troops succeeded in escaping capture and went to rejoin the Belgian field army, posted on the river Gette, covering both Brussels and Antwerp. If the city of Liège was in the enemy’s hands, the forts continued to resist, and it was only when the 30.5- and 42.0-centimeter guns arrived from Germany, that one after another they were shattered to bits. The fort of Loncin, where General Leman had continued to resist, exploded, and was taken on the sixteenth of August. It had stopped the advance of the First Army under von Kluck for a week.
And so it was that the army of von Kluck did not come in touch with the Belgian field army near Louvain before August 10. The number of the invading troops was so great and the danger of the Belgians being cut off from their Antwerp base so imminent, that King Albert decided to retire, after some combats at Haelen, Hauthem, and Aerschot, to the entrenched position of Antwerp. This happened on August 19. The flood of the invaders went over Louvain, Brussels, and then turned southward. There, thanks to the delay procured by the resistance of Liège, stood, on the Sambre, the Fifth French Army, and, on the canal from Mons to Condé, the British Expeditionary Force under Sir John French. Moreover, the Belgian fortress of Namur, at the confluence of the Sambre and the Meuse, offered a strong point d’appui for the Allied forces in the south of Belgium.
Events happened, however, very rapidly. Namur fell under the attack of the Second German Army under von Bülow and the forts were destroyed by the fire of the giant German guns. The Belgian garrison, under General Michel, partly succeeded in escaping to France on August 23. The same day, the French on the Sambre were forced back by von Bülow and von Kluck maneuvering together, and the British at Mons were compelled to fall back and to begin their glorious retreat on Le Cateau.
When the battles of the Sambre and Mons were raging, the Belgian field army suddenly made a sortie from Antwerp, in order to menace the Germans in the rear. They had a great fight on a line between Vilvorde and Aerschot, but, having no large guns, did not succeed in breaking through the German observation army which covered the line from Liège to Brussels.
They made a second sortie on September 9. They succeeded in recapturing Aerschot and were about to retake Louvain, when German reinforcements stopped their advance. This sortie retained in Belgium important German reinforcements, which were on their way to restore the German fortunes on the Marne. The German General Staff frankly admits the importance of this move on the part of the Belgian army.
A third sortie did not succeed, for, exactly at this time (September 27), the Germans began the siege of Antwerp. They wanted to put an end to these continuous threats on their rear and their communication lines with Germany. Just as Liège and Namur fell under the fire of the 30.5- and 42.0-centimeter guns, Antwerp proved irremediably lost after two or three days’ bombardment. The British marine fusiliers and men of the Naval Reserve, sent by Churchill with the hope of delaying the fall of the fortress, could merely support the morale of the Belgian defenders by their presence, but that was all. On the evening of October 6 the Belgian field army, under the personal conduct of King Albert, succeeded in leaving Antwerp without the Germans being aware of it. The city continued to be defended by the garrison troops and the British. After a terrible bombardment of thirty-six hours the last defenders escaped in their turn, and on October 9 the civilian authorities surrendered the town to General von Beseler. The Germans boasted of the great war spoils found in the town, but they were extremely angry to find the city empty of troops.
The Belgian field army, meanwhile, accomplished a very dangerous but admirably conducted retreat through Flanders, and stopped on the Yser, on October 14-15. The soldiers were exhausted. They had barely taken up their position along the little river when a mighty German army, composed partly of some corps of von Beseler’s army, partly of fresh troops—mostly university men, volunteers—just arrived from Germany, appeared, with the aim of breaking through in the direction of Dunkirk and Calais.
During more than seven days, 48,000 Belgian infantrymen, “in the last stage of exhaustion”—so said Sir John French in his dispatch to the War Office—supported by a force of not more than 6,000 French marine fusiliers defended the Yser positions against some 100,000 enemies, provided with very heavy artillery and all the means of modern warfare. On October 25, when at a certain point the Germans finally broke through, French reinforcements arrived and the Belgian General Staff decided to flood the positions in front of the last Belgian line. This put an end to the struggle. The troops of the Duke of Würtemberg suffered an ignominious defeat. They never reached either Dunkirk or Calais.
The Germans were not more fortunate on the Ypres front: here the British of Sir John French, supported by some French troops, also held their line, and at the close of November, 1914, the struggle ended in the south of Belgium and the long period of trench warfare began.
Except for that little slip of country including Dixmude, Nieuport, and Ypres, Belgium was now under German occupation. Then began the “war of the civilians.” Already during the invasion, in that fateful month of August, many civilians had been killed by the invading troops. Under pretext that there were francs tireurs—which should be categorically denied, there never being an organized “franc-tireur” war in Belgium—the invaders committed horrible atrocities in the region of Liège, at Aerschot, Louvain, Tamines, Andennes, Namur, Termonde, and in the south of Luxemburg, burning a large number of houses, pillaging, and killing over 6,000 people, among them old men, women, and children. Terrorization seemed the immediate aim of this peculiar system of warfare.
When these troops had disappeared in the direction of Paris, General von der Goltz was intrusted with the task of organizing the administration of occupied Belgium. He arrived at Brussels on September 1, 1914, with some 25 military and civilian officials. Belgium was now divided into two parts: the “General Government,” including the whole of the occupied territory, except both East and West Flanders, and the “Etappengebiet” or “army zone,” including these last two provinces. The “General Government” was subject to the authority of the Governor General, residing at Brussels; the “Etappengebiet” was responsible to the army commanders. Along the coast was established the “Marine-gebiet” or coast defense, under the command of Admiral von Schroeder, residing at Bruges. At the head of each province was put a military governor, and in every district a Kreischef. Every town had a local “Kommandantur.” Besides these military officials were the civilian officials of the “Zivilverwaltung.”
Between these two elements, the military and the civilians, there did not always exist great cordiality, and, when they did not agree, the military always had the last word. Also, at Brussels, the authority of the Governor General was sometimes handicapped by the intervention of the Quartermaster General, von Sauberzweig, representative of the German General Staff, and it seems beyond doubt that the excesses and crimes committed by the German government at Brussels were frequently imposed by the military party. The murder of Edith Cavell and the deportation of civilians to Germany and to the firing-line were certainly acts of the military.
The situation of the Belgian civilian population became now very peculiar. The Belgian government, which had left Antwerp together with the King, had accepted the hospitality of the French government at Havre; the King and Queen were with the troops on the Yser. There remained in Belgium, as representatives of the national power, the burgomasters or mayors of the various towns, the parish priests, and the bishops. They were to be the leaders of the oppressed population. Cardinal Mercier took up the fight against the crimes, the excesses, and the illegalities of the occupying power, and the mayor of the capital, Max, stirred the people by his patriotic and gallant attitude. The Germans sent him to Germany for having been too outspoken in his feelings; he remained there in confinement till the end of the war. They did not dare to arrest Cardinal Mercier, but they tried by all means to silence him and to prevent his encouraging, in his pastorals and letters addressed to his flock, the sense of patriotism and the endurance of the people. The Cardinal never missed any occasion to tell the Belgians what was their duty in the face of the invader, or to protest against atrocities committed, or to try to prevent brutalities as, for instance, at the time of the awful deportations. The bishops of Liège and Namur also took up the same energetic attitude. In many towns and villages the burgomasters did their duty as calmly as the priests.
Thanks to the attitude of their civilian and ecclesiastical leaders, the Belgians found the necessary patience to endure the harshness, the persecutions, and the privations of the new régime. It may be said that, generally speaking, they offered, on “the interior front,” as good a resistance as the soldiers on the Yser front.
Their cities were occupied by German garrisons; their houses sometimes filled with German officers or requisitioned in order to serve as a German Casino or Soldatenheim. Every month, at the local Kommandantur, the young men of age to bear arms, the former civic guards, etc., must present themselves. A very severe control was established in order to prevent the young men from escaping to Holland and rejoining the Belgian army. In order to prevent this, the Belgian frontier to the north was provided with three lines of electrified wire and soldiers were constantly patrolling, ready to fire on those who should succeed in cutting the wires and passing. These terrible threats did not prevent thousands of young Belgians from facing the ordeal and from getting through these wires, on their way to the Belgian army on the Yser. From Holland, they went to England, then reached France where they were received in Belgian instruction camps and prepared for “doing their bit” in the Yser trenches.
The parents or relatives of these young Belgians were held responsible for the escape of their sons and heavily fined or imprisoned. The German administration applied, indeed, the principle of collective responsibility. For the fault of one individual, the whole community was punished. So, for instance, cutting of a telephone wire, singing a patriotic song, distributing secret newspapers, all this was punished by heavy fines imposed on a whole town or village.
Everywhere the German criminal or secret police, organized by Governor General von Bissing, was at work, trying to get as many Belgians as possible into prison. The German military penal code was applied to Belgium for offenses termed as endangering the security of the German army. These crimes were punished by military tribunals, where no Belgian barrister was admitted, and where people were condemned to death or to heavy penalties without appeal. In one year alone, 1915-16, 103,092 Belgians were thus condemned by these military tribunals, and 100 death penalties were pronounced, many of them being immediately executed. The best-known cases were those of Edith Cavell, Gabrielle Petit, Franck, Baekelmans, etc. This régime of terror did not curb the courage of the people.
The Germans tried to create despair and dissension by spreading false news, by announcing loudly and daily their victories, by creating German or Germanized papers, such as Le Bruxellois, by exciting the animosity against the Allies, especially against England, by boasting that the Belgians had been left in the lurch by their influential friends.
To counteract this poison propaganda, a secret press was created at Brussels and in many other towns. The “Libre Belgique,” organized by the editor of the former Belgian paper Le Patriote, Mr. Jourdain, is the most celebrated of them. The Germans never succeeded in discovering the writers or the printers, but many people, suspected of taking part in the enterprise, were fined or imprisoned or deported.
The most cunning device of the Germans was the so-called “activism.” They knew that, before the war, a party of Flemings, called “Flamingants,” had asked for more influence of the Flemish tongue in Belgian public life and advocated the creation of a Flemish university. Governor von Bissing tried then to sow dissension between Flemings and Walloons and to destroy the very basis of Belgian nationality itself. He took over the program of the Flamingants and created, with the help of a few traitors, a Flemish university of Ghent. Great privileges were attached to the matriculation at this Flemish-German university. The scheme did not succeed. Von Bissing went farther: he introduced administrative separation between Flanders and Wallony, and created an autonomous “Verwaltung” for Flanders at Brussels and for Wallony at Namur, with separated ministries. In this he was helped by a score of traitors, who called themselves “activists,” and who were particularly attracted by bribes and high positions offered by the Germans. They formed a so-called “Council for Flanders,” whose members went even to visit the German Chancellor at Berlin.
A shudder of revolt passed through the country, and the great majority of the Flemings formally condemned the “activists.” The Belgian magistrates decided to arrest the leader of the activists, Borms, who called himself the Flemish “Minister for War,” under the very nose of the Germans. Borms was arrested at Brussels, but instantly liberated by his German protectors. This clearly showed the relations of the “activists” toward the enemy, but the courageous Belgian magistrates were deported to Germany.
The resistance of the Belgians was never broken, but material life was very difficult. Owing to the requisitions of horses, cattle, fruits, etc., there came a day when starvation was near. Then was founded, in October, 1914, the admirable Commission for Relief in Belgium, with Herbert Hoover at its head, who undertook the great task of revictualing Belgium during the occupation.
The Germans had not only requisitioned food; they also requisitioned the very means of industrial life. According to a scheme conceived and worked out by the president of the “Allgemeine Elektrizitätsgesellschaft,” Walther Rathenau, Belgium was to be stripped of all natural and manufactured products which could help the German army in continuing and winning the war. Coal, metals, chemical products, wood, wool, linen, cotton, copper, rubber, machines, machine tools, oil, transport material, horses, etc., were put under “saisie” by successive decrees of von Bissing and sent to Germany, with the help of German business men, who visited the Belgian factories and marked the things to be requisitioned.
A consequence of this was the closing of many factories and the creation of an enormous number of forced strikers. These men, then, were considered as idlers and, by order of the military, taken out of their houses and sent by whole trains, in cattle-trucks, to Germany. There they had to work for the German army, even making munitions to kill their brethren. This was the origin of the awful deportations, which stirred the conscience of the civilized world. About 150,000 Belgians, mostly workmen, but intellectuals, bourgeois, and even schoolboys not excepted, were either sent to Germany or to the firing-line in France and Belgium, where they were compelled to dig trenches, construct roads, etc. A large number of them refused flatly to work for the enemy. They were submitted in the camps to real tortures, beaten, martyrized, and scores of them died. Others were sent back, exhausted by their martyrdom, and died on arriving in their native home.
The financial wealth of Belgium was also crippled by the heavy war levies imposed on provinces, towns, and villages. In December, 1914, von Bissing imposed on the Belgian provinces a collective war levy of 40,000,000 francs monthly; in November, 1916, this levy had reached 50,000,000 francs monthly. Von Falkenhausen, who succeeded von Bissing, raised it to 60,000,000 francs. It would be impossible to estimate exactly the total of the levies and fines imposed on Belgian towns and villages during four years of war.
Four years, indeed, this terrible thing went on. Then, suddenly, came “the day of revenge,” of which Cardinal Mercier had spoken in 1917 in his letter to General von Huehne. The mighty German war machine collapsed under the combined effort of the Allied forces. At the end of the battle front, near the sea, was constituted the “group of armies of Flanders,” composed of French, British, Americans, and Belgians, under the command of King Albert. In September, 1918, the great offensive began on the Flanders front. The German positions were taken by storm, and, after a short interruption, the drive went on again in October. Soon the Flanders coast was evacuated, and everywhere, in Belgian towns and villages, amidst cries of joy and tears, amidst Belgian flags kept jealously hidden during four years, the sturdy troops of the Yser came home again, as victors of the right over might.
At the beginning of November came the end: the armistice was signed and the Germans compelled to evacuate the country which they once hoped to dominate forever. On a wonderful day in that same month, King Albert and his queen followed by his army and by British, French, and American troops, entered Brussels and saw again rise before their eyes the tower of the historic Hôtel de Ville. The nightmare was over, Belgium was free again. And in ages to come, the children will learn the history of that period, during which Belgium covered itself with glory, because “it stood the test in the hour of the Great Trial.”