Hacking Through Belgium

by Edmund Dane

To follow in detail the operations from now of the Belgian forces from day to day would be less informing than to sum up their plan and their effect.

As it stood on August 25 the situation was that the Belgians held all the country to the north of the Scheldt and the Dyle, and the Germans all the country to the south of these rivers. From Turcoing on the French frontier to Antwerp, the Scheldt follows a course roughly parallel to the coast. At Antwerp its bed describes a sharp bend to seaward. Some ten miles south of this bend, the main waterway receives the Rupel, formed by the junction to the eastward of the Dyle and the Nethe. Taken together, the Scheldt and the Dyle, both deep, sluggish watercourses, offer a natural defence of the seaboard provinces.

From behind this natural line of defence the Belgians, ceaselessly on the watch, sallied forth at every chance offered, to harass and entrap the enemy. Sudden dashes were made upon his communications by armed motor-cars; attacks were made upon railway lines and bridges; his convoys were unexpectedly attacked and cut up by superior forces; in a word, he was kept in perpetual hot water.

The military effect of this was more important than may at first sight appear. In the first place, it was made necessary for the Germans, not only to keep heavy forces afoot in Belgium, but to disperse those forces. Hence though the forces, taken together, were large, the Belgians concentrated on Antwerp were in a position to deliver in superior strength a blow at any one of these bodies, and thus to worst the whole of them in detail.

In the second place, these Parthian tactics made the transport of munitions and supplies to the German armies in France by the line through Brussels a business calling for vigilance and caution. That greatly lessened the value of the line to the enemy. On this supply line the German right wing in France mainly depended. The Belgians, therefore, were not merely defending their own country, but indirectly were aiding the French and British operations on the farther side of the French frontier.

Now the weakness of the Belgian position was that, while they could hold the line of the Dyle and that of the Scheldt as far as Termonde, their force was too small to bar the passage of the Scheldt farther west. It was open to the Germans, by seizing Ghent, to turn the defensive position in a manner that would speedily have become dangerous. Well aware of this, the Germans advanced upon Ghent. Coincidently, however, the Belgian operations farther east became more active and threatening. To meet them, the Germans were obliged to withdraw most of the troops sent to Ghent. Just at that juncture (August 27) a body of British marines was landed at Ostend. From Ghent the enemy had hastily to withdraw. British troops advanced to Ghent, and the whole line of the Scheldt was secured.

The value of that move is clear. From behind the line of the Scheldt, the Allied forces were within easy striking distance of the main railways south of Brussels. Later on, and at a critical juncture for the German armies in France, the Belgians cut those railways. That these lines were not cut before was a part of the Allies’ strategy.

What in these circumstances were the measures taken by the invaders? The main measure was, as far as possible, to depopulate the country between their lines and the Belgian defences. The measure had two objects—to prevent the Belgians receiving information of German movements, and more especially of the movement of reinforcements; and to embarrass the defence by driving into the seaboard districts crowds of homeless and starving refugees.

The measure, however, was carried out on such a scale as to suggest that yet another object was to prepare the way for a German immigration as a support of the contemplated conquest. The expropriation of native land-owners on the frontier of Prussian Poland, and the granting of their lands to officers and non-commissioned officers of the German army reserves, is an example of the policy, accompanied in Prussian Poland by the prohibition of the native language in elementary schools.

European history affords happily few episodes equal to the depopulation of part of the valley of the Meuse, which was at this time entered upon. The towns of Dinant and Ardenne were totally destroyed, their male populations massacred, and the women and children carried off in defiance of every usage of civilised warfare. Indeed, to describe this devastation of Belgium as in any sense civilised warfare would be a travesty of the term. Its ferocity was possibly no more than a cloak to hide a calculated purpose.