November 1st: A decree dated October 14th prepares for the seizure of all textile materials, ribbons, hosiery, etc. No more than one-tenth of the stocks can be manufactured, under a penalty of 10,000 marks. A decree dated October 17th makes the declaration of poplars all over Belgium compulsory.
It was scarcely necessary to underline some passages of this report. However bad may be the impression it causes, it would be twenty-six times worse if we had the leisure to follow step by step the progress of German economic policy in Belgium. It is evident that the German administration, in spite of its former declarations, is resolved to ruin Belgian industry and to throw out of work the greatest number of men possible. All raw material must go to Germany in order to be worked there. As it has become evident that the Belgian workers will not submit to war work so long as they remain in their surroundings, they must be torn away from their country and compelled to follow the materials and machines over the frontier. Labour has become an inanimated object necessary to the prosecution of the German war. It is as indispensable to Germany as cotton, nickel and copper. It will be treated as such. If the men resist, they will be crushed. If the soul of Belgium will not yield to persuasion, it will be taken away from her, like her cattle, her corn, her iron and her steel. And so Belgium will become a weapon in Germany's hands, a weapon which will strike at Belgium. And the only thought of the deported worker turning a shell in a German factory will be, as is suggested by Louis Raemaekers' cartoon, "Perhaps this one will kill my own son?"
V.
THE MODERN SLAVE.
I. THE CREEPING TIDE.
We must now deal with the second factor which makes the conditions worse in Belgium than in Germany. While German peace-factories, ruined by the blockade, have been turned into war-factories, the majority of Belgian industries have remained idle. In spite of the high wages offered by the Germans—some skilled workmen were offered as much as £2 and £2 10s. per day—the workers resisted the constant pressure exerted upon them and preferred to live miserably on half-wages or with the help given them by the "Comité National" rather than accept any work which might directly or indirectly help the occupying power. If a few thousands, compelled by hunger or unable to resist their conquerors' threats, passed the frontier, all the rest of the working population kept up, under the most depressing conditions, a great patriotic strike, the "strike of folded arms." If they could not, as the 20,000 young heroes who crossed the Dutch frontier, join the Belgian army on the Yser; they could at least wage war at home and oppose to the enemy the impenetrable rampart of their naked breasts. It should not be said, when King Albert should return to Brussels at the head of his troops, that his subjects had not shared the sufferings of his soldiers. They should also have their wounds to show, they should also have their dead to honour.
When, at the beginning of November last, the protests of the Belgian Government and the "Signal of Distress" of the Belgian bishops made known the slave raids which had taken place, most of the outside world was shocked and surprised. It had lived, for months, under the impression that "things were not so bad" in the conquered provinces. After the outcry caused by the atrocities of August, 1914, there came a natural reaction, a sort of anti-climax. Fines, requisitions, petty persecutions do not strike the imagination in the same way as the burning of towns and the wholesale massacre of peaceful citizens. It had become necessary to follow things closely in order to understand that, instead of suffering less, the Belgian population was suffering more and more every day. Besides, news was scarce and difficult to check. When alarming reports came from the Dutch frontier, it was usual to think that the newspaper correspondents spread them without much discrimination.
But to those who were familiar with the policy pursued by the German administration since the spring of 1915, the bad news which they received lately only confirmed the fears which they had entertained for a long time. As the war went on, it became more and more evident that Germany, whose man-power was steadily decreasing, would no longer tolerate the resistance of the Belgian workers, and would even attempt to enrol in her army of labour all the able-bodied men of the conquered provinces. The slave-raids coincide with the "levée en masse" in the Empire and with the organisation of the new "Polish Army": "If every German is made to fight or to work, ought not every Belgian, every Pole, to be compelled to do the same? The fact that they should turn their arms or their tools against their own country is not worthy of consideration, as it is supposed already to enjoy the blessings of German rule and has become an integral part of the Fatherland."