4 dinners at 0.
[IX]
THE CITY OF THE CARDINAL
Unquestionably the Belgian above all others the Germans would rid themselves of if they could, is Cardinal Mercier. He is the exalted Prince of the Church, but in the hour of decision, he stept swiftly down and, with a ringing call to courage, took his place with the people. Ever since that day he has helped them to stand united, defiant, waiting the day of liberation. Others have been silenced by imprisonment or death, but the greatest power has not dared to lay hands on the Cardinal. He is the voice, not only of the Church, but of Belgium heartening her children.
Malines has her cantines and soupes and ouvroirs, all the branches of secours necessary to a city that was one of the centers of attack; but these are not the most interesting things about Malines. It is above all as the city of the Cardinal that she stands forth in this war. Her “œuvre” has been to give moral and spiritual secours, not only to her own people, but to those of every part of Belgium.
Since under the “occupation” the press has naturally been “controlled,” this secours has been distributed chiefly through the famous letters of the Cardinal sent to priests to be re-read to their people. We remember the thrill with which the first one was read in America. After the war there will be pilgrimages to the little room where it was printed. I had the privilege of having it shown me by that friend of the Cardinal who was the printer of the first letter, and whose brother was at this time a prisoner in Germany for having printed the second. The room was much as it had been left after the search; books were still disarranged on their shelves, papers and pamphlets heaped in confusion on the tables. The red seals with which the Germans had closed the keyholes had been broken, but their edges still remained. Standing in the midst of the disarray, remembering that the owner had already been six months in a German prison, and looking out on the shattered façade at the end of the garden, I realized, at least partly, another moment of the war.
This quickening secours, then, is distributed chiefly by letter, but continually by presence and speech in Malines itself, and occasionally in other parts of the country. On the 21st of July, 1916, the anniversary of the independence of Belgium, all Brussels knew that the Cardinal was coming to celebrate high mass in Sainte Gudule. The mass was to begin at 11 o’clock, but at 9.30 practically every foot of standing-room in the vast cathedral was taken. In the dimness a great sea of people waited patiently, silently, the arrival of their leader. Occasionally a whispered question or rumor flashed along the nave. “He has come!” “He has been prevented!” There was a tacit understanding that there should be no demonstration—the Cardinal himself had ordered it. Every one was trying to control himself, and yet, as the air grew thicker, and others fought their way into the already packed transepts, one felt that anything might happen! Almost every person had a bit of green ribbon (color of hope) or an ivy leaf (symbol of endurance) pinned to his coat. The wearing of the national colors was strictly forbidden, but the national spirit found another way: green swiftly replaced the orange, black and red.