CHAPTER XII BRUSSELS, TOURNAI, AND THE GERMAN FRONT
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.
Very few motor-cars are seen in the streets, and during my stay of more than a week I did not see a single car driven by a civilian. The petrol question seems to have become extremely serious. All the motor garages are closed, and it is impossible to obtain the spirit at any price, not only in large quantities, but even in small bottles from a chemist's shop.
This accounts for the boom in acetylene lamps and carbide. New large shops selling these goods have opened all over the country. In most villages gas and electric light have been cut off, and this is the only means of obtaining any light.
Here, again, Brussels has very special treatment. The town at night is as full of light as usual—probably because the Germans know perfectly well that if the Allies should attempt an air attack they would almost certainly damage the civilian population more than the occupiers. Very often, in the daytime, a Zeppelin will appear over the town; people are so used to the sight that they take little or no notice.
To sum up: the Brussels population has become accustomed very quickly to the new situation. Nobody seems to mind the incessant rumble of the guns in the distance, nor the food scarcity and high prices, nor the abnormal life of the town. Nor the lack of amusements.
I have said some theatres are open; they are, but only for the Germans. The Belgian people refuse to go to them for two good reasons. They do not want to mix with the Germans, and they do not think it right to enjoy themselves when their country is reduced to such pitiful conditions and their King and the remnants of his army are fighting on the last bit of Belgian soil.
For the Germans there are even music-hall shows and dances, and, with that beautiful sense of tradition which, according to Nietzsche, is one of the secrets of German clumsiness, even the decrepit institution of Tango Teas is still kept alive. And there the Hun stuffs himself with more champagne and costly food.
At ten miles' distance from Brussels the inhabitants of Forest have been rationed at half a pound of brown bread per head.
* * *
It is very difficult to obtain from the German Kommandantur in Belgium permission to travel anywhere past the line of Ghent, Brussels, and Charleroi. The permits are not readily granted even to Germans and Belgians, and a foreigner, whatever his nationality, finds it almost impossible to secure one. The parties of American, Italian, and German journalists taken to visit the trenches and the supposed firing line were really shown only a few places previously arranged. In no case were they allowed to see the things they really wanted to see, nor were they permitted to talk to the population or to the soldiers.
If I wished to get near the front I realised that I must find a very convincing pretext. I happened to have some friends, proprietors of large motor works in Tournai, so I managed to obtain a pass for this town, alleging some business transactions as my excuse.
From Brussels the train only took me as far as Enghien, from which little town I had to proceed by road in an impossible vehicle pulled by an old horse, so old and worn out that it had escaped German requisition. It must have been a very old horse to escape that.
Curiously enough, the part of Belgium I crossed while approaching the German front seemed to have suffered very little. No ruins and no burned houses. Indeed, but for the sentries posted on the road every quarter of a mile, one could have thought the country was at peace.
But a few miles before Tournai was reached the country began to assume a warlike appearance.
Numerous trenches, which evidently had never been used, and which were filled with ice-covered water, lay ready for an eventual retreat. From this point up to the front there were long lines of trenches at frequent intervals. Before reaching Tournai I passed a military aerodrome, which had been arranged in a large treeless piece of ground near Basècles. Two large Zeppelin shelters and some temporary hangars, capable of holding about ten aeroplanes, had been erected.
One of the Zeppelins was just coming back from the direction of Brussels when we passed; two aeroplanes had been taken out in the open air, and a number of soldiers were busy round them.
Though Tournai is not very near the front the town is completely occupied by German troops, and is treated as a town in the battle zone. This is because the town occupies a very important position on the River Schelde and because Lille, about twenty kilometres westward is too close to the firing line to permit of its being used as a base.
All the bridges on the river are mined, most of the houses have been converted into temporary hospitals for slightly wounded soldiers, and the town is filled with officers and men just back from the trenches.
Never before had I seen German soldiers newly returned from the field of battle. Nothing remained of the well-dressed, well-fed, and stiff troops generally seen in Germany. Their uniforms were torn and dirty; their faces unshaven, thin, and often unhealthy. They did not sing, they were not noisy. I saw them in cafés and restaurants writing long letters home, with a large glass of beer in front of them.
Often in the same establishment were groups of bright young soldiers in comparatively fresh uniforms, soldiers who were cheering and singing because next day they were going to the front. They were men of the '95 and '96 classes who had just come from Germany. The veterans were looking at them, and I heard one say to another, "They will cool down soon; they don't know yet what the trenches are like."
Tournai has seen going through its streets most of the German wounded on their way back to the Fatherland and most of the prisoners travelling to the concentration camps in Germany. Nobody could tell me, even approximately, the number of wounded that had gone through the town, but everybody agreed the number was very large, though the number of sick is still larger. Typhoid fever claims a large number of victims, both amongst the troops and the civilian population.
Special notices warning everyone to drink no water unless it had been boiled were to be seen everywhere. Lately numerous cases of lockjaw (tetanus) have also made their appearance. It is said that soldiers get the dreadful illness while working with barbed wire.
The station of Tournai, as well as two large hotels near it, have been converted into depôts for the wounded who are to be sent to Germany. Apparently the German Government does not like wounded or sick soldiers to come into touch with civilians or with soldiers going to the front. It is to avoid such contact that they are concentrated in Tournai, and from there sent viâ Mons, Liége, Aix-la-Chapelle, straight to Germany. No civilians are allowed into the station at Tournai, and the wounded always travel by special train.
For the prisoners it is different. They are marched through the town, preceded and followed by German troops. The population offers them cigars, sweets, and tobacco, to the great rage of the German soldiers, who can never manage to make any friends. Very often the same group of soldiers is made to march through the town many times to impress the population with the large number of prisoners.
A lady who has been in Tournai since the beginning of the war told me that she once noticed amongst a group of British soldiers a very tall, thin, and red-haired Highlander, and she remarked to a lady friend with her, "Isn't that man the living caricature of the Englishman as we always see him on the stage?"
But two or three days later she saw a fellow exactly like the first amongst another group of prisoners; she came to the conclusion that the giraffe-like figures and ginger hair were rather common in the British Army.
The next day brought another group of British prisoners and another apparition of a very tall, red-haired "Tommy." She looked at him interrogatively, at which he bowed and shouted out in a jolly voice: "Here I am again, madam." The lady bid him good-bye, but the Tommy laughed, and answered, "No, au revoir. I shall call again soon, I am sure."
I wanted to get as near the firing line as possible, and I asked permission to go to Lille. This was denied me, and as, considering the enormous number of sentries on the roads, it would have been foolish to try and go there without it, I decided to go instead to Courtrai, a little town north of Tournai, which is only about twelve kilometres (about eight miles) from the firing line.
Tournai, which is not at all damaged in the centre of the town, has a number of houses destroyed in its northern part. The wonderful cathedral, a mixture of twenty different styles, but, in spite of this, quite harmonious and beautiful, has received a shell which luckily has not done much damage.
Four large motor-vans passed in front of me on the road to Courtrai, and my horse, which in former years had probably been a good charger, reared and neighed loudly. They were Red Cross vans loaded with wounded. Four or five times a day they go to Tournai carrying wounded, and come back carrying sanitary material to the northern section of the German front.
I crossed the Schelde by a temporary bridge made with curious concrete flat boats. The bridge was guarded by numerous soldiers, and with them was an Austrian officer, the only one I saw during the whole of my journey in Belgium.
I had to get off the saddle and show my papers. While waiting for the officer to look at them, my attention was attracted to an extraordinary-looking boat drawn up near the river side. The boat was just like one of the ordinary flat, large river boats which in Belgium carry stones and coal on canals and rivers, but for an exceptionally clean, smart appearance lent to it by a verandah covered with glass, under which were numerous palm trees. The whole boat was painted white, and on the top of it waved the Red Cross flag. On deck were two white-clad nurses, and one or two wounded with bandaged heads sat smoking and reading in basket-chairs on the verandah.
I was told that the boat is one of the Berlin Red Cross League floating hospitals, and that the nurses are all ladies in society. These hospital boats are specially intended for wounded or sick officers who are likely to recover soon if properly treated.
* * *
Are there any inhabitants left in Courtrai? I did not see any during my visit there. The hotels and the public buildings were taken up by Germans; numerous platforms for guns were being constructed in the western part of the town. A number of temporary fortification works had already been prepared here. The line of the Lys seems to have been carefully fortified down to Courtrai, and one almost gets the impression that the Germans are seriously thinking of the possibility of a retreat on this river, while a second and still better fortified line has been prepared twenty kilometres (about thirteen miles) behind on the Schelde.
At the base of the old fortifications of the town, where the famous Bataille des Eperons d'Or was fought, the invaders have arranged a sort of artillery depôt. The special carriages carry the fire-pieces from Essen to this spot, where they are put together, and then sent to their destination.
There are the enormous siege guns, as massive as elephants, and as complicated as a cathedral organ; the quick-firing guns, light and agile; the short and squat mortars; and on one side a sort of cemetery of old artillery pieces; guns without carriages, smashed wheels, distorted and broken remains of old arms blackened and made unrecognisable by the explosions of hostile projectiles.
The number of soldiers here seemed enormous. Day after day trains loaded with new troops kept coming. These men are only in part sent to the front, the other part leaving for an unknown destination. I had the impression that something was being prepared, probably a desperate attack on the north-west in the direction of Ypres and Dixmude.
Courtrai is quite close to the trenches; often regiments which have been for a week or ten days in the firing line come back, and are replaced by fresh troops.
Every now and again a shell bursts in the town and causes some damage. It is almost impossible to get anything to eat anywhere, and the population is strictly rationed. To make sure that no light will give away the position of the town at night, gas and electric light have been cut off. At nine o'clock everybody must be indoors.
I don't know if civilians have all left the town by order of the Governor, but it is certain that it seems to be only inhabited by soldiers. Some houses with doors wide open are completely abandoned, whilst others, the best ones, are inhabited by officers. A number have been burned.
In no hotels was there a room to be had, and I spent the night on a billiard-table covered with a mattress. Every now and again the guns awakened me with their thunder-like rumble, which at night sounded nearer and stranger. I could see the clouds in the distance reddened by the flames of the explosions.
In the morning I went down to the cemetery of the town, which, being at the extreme west, gave me opportunity to glance towards the forbidden ground, the real firing line. In the distance, with the help of a good pair of field-glasses, lent me by an officer, I could see something moving slowly with smoke above it. Behind the leafless trees of the road more smoke announced the German artillery position.
I told what I had seen to an officer, who happened to be a very nice fellow, and I asked him: "Is a modern battlefield always so slow?"
"Yes, almost always."
"And this goes on for weeks?" I said.
"For months, sir!"
"And don't you think it likely that you or the others will try a decided move one of these days?"
"We hope so," answered the officer; "we have not begun to fight yet."
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Transcriber's Note:
Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.