You now begin to see what the victory of Germany would mean. Not only would the conquered lands lose their independence and be treated as provinces of Germany, but there would be a return to the days of savagery in warfare. Men would thereafter fight like wild beasts in the jungle. A soldier would no longer be a knight but a fiend. We should bid farewell to that noble ideal which Tennyson set before the warrior in his "Idylls of the King":—[207]
"To break the heathen, and uphold the Christ, To ride abroad redressing human wrongs, To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it, To honour his own word as if his God's."
I must now tell you how the Germans behaved in some of the Belgian cities. You already know that even in the Middle Ages Belgium was a rich and flourishing land. The wealthy merchants of Flanders built themselves stately houses, and filled them with costly and beautiful things. They also gave their money freely to build glorious churches, quaint belfries, and noble town halls. Artists were encouraged to paint pictures for their adornment, and craftsmen vied with each other in beautifying them with lovely designs in wood and metal. Before the war there was hardly a village in the whole land which could not show some beautiful building or some priceless work of art.
Germans in the Church at Aerschot.
(From the painting by E. Matania. By permission of The Sphere.)
Let me tell you what happened at Aerschot when the Germans marched into the town. The men broke into the houses, stole everything of value, and destroyed the furniture. In the cellars they found stores of wine, and large numbers of them were soon mad with drink. They stabled their horses in the beautiful church, broke down the carved woodwork, and showed the utmost contempt for the sacred place. While the German commander was standing on the balcony of the mayor's house he was shot dead, it is said, by the mayor's fourteen-year-old son, though probably it was the act of a drunken German soldier firing his rifle in sport. At once one hundred and fifty of the men of the town were seized, and in their presence the mayor, his son, and brother were shot. Then the males of the town were forced to run towards the river while the Germans fired at them. More than forty of these poor fellows were killed.
There is an old monkish rhyme which tells us that Brussels rejoices in noble men, Antwerp in money, Ghent in halters, Bruges in pretty girls, Louvain in learned men, and Malines in fools. The monks were not very complimentary to Ghent and Malines, but you will notice that they gave praise to the other cities. I will now tell you the fate of the city that was famed for learned men—Louvain. You will find it on the map, by the side of the river Dyle, about eighteen miles east of Brussels.
If you had visited Louvain in July 1914, you would probably have called it a dull town, and said that its inhabitants were either priests or students or landladies. But if you had been interested in history, you would have found Louvain anything but dull. Its university, which is one of the oldest and most famous in the world, has been called the Oxford of Belgium. It was founded in the days when Chaucer was writing his "Canterbury Tales," and amongst its students were many who have made a great mark in history. For hundreds of years English scholars flocked to it, and amongst them was our own Sir Thomas More,[208] who wrote an account of his visit. You perhaps know that his greatest work is "Utopia,"[209] a fanciful picture of a land in which everybody had a chance of being healthy, happy, wise, and good. More tells us at the beginning of his book that his friend Peter Gillies, who lived at Louvain, introduced him to a sunburnt sailor with a black beard, and that this man gave him that account of Utopia which he set down in his book. When the book was written More had it printed at Louvain, for the city was famous for its printers and booksellers. Some people think that More built his house at Chelsea on the model of a friend's house in the old city.