In a letter sent by General Hurt, Military Governor of Brussels and of the province of Brabant, to all burgomasters, it is said that "where the Communes will not furnish the lists (of unemployed) the German administration will itself designate the men to be deported to Germany. If then ... errors are committed, the burgomasters will only have themselves to blame, for the German administration has no time and no means for making an inquiry concerning the personal status of each person."
Finally, an extraordinary proclamation of the "Major-Commandant d'Etapes" of Antoing, dated October 20th, announces that "the population will never be compelled to work under continuous fire," this population being composed, according to the same document, of men and women between 17 and 46 years of age. If they refuse "they will be placed in a battalion of civil workers, on reduced rations." Here is the address of one of these militarised civilians dropped from a train leaving for the Western front and picked up by a friend: X., 3 Comp. Ziv. Arb. Bat. 27.—Et. Indp.—Armee No.
This did not prevent Governor von Bissing from declaring, a week later (letter to Cardinal Mercier, October 26th), that: "No workman can be obliged to participate in work connected with the war (entreprises de guerre)"! [[5]]
The last fatal step has been taken. From decree to decree, from proclamation to proclamation, the last threads of the curtain of legality which remained between the victim and the tyrant have been cut one by one. Between the acts of the German administration in Belgium and those of the African slave drivers, we are now unable to discover any difference whatever. The old plague which had been the shame of Europe for more than two centuries has risen again from its ashes. It appears before us with all its hideous characteristics. People are torn from their homes and sent away to foreign lands without any hope of returning. Any protest is crushed by the application of torture in the form of starvation, exposure, and their kindred ills ... There is, however, one new point about the modern slave: his face is as white as that of his master.
The nineteenth century stamped out black slavery. It was left to the twentieth century to reinstate white slavery. It is the purest glory of the English-speaking people to have succeeded in eradicating the old evil. It will be the eternal shame of the German-speaking people to have replaced it by something worse. Civilisation forbade any man, sixty years ago, to force another man to work for him. Civilisation to-day does not forbid a man—a conqueror—to force another man to work against himself. The old slave only lost his liberty. The new slave must lose his honour, his dignity, his self-respect. He has only one other alternative: death. And this, not the glorious death of a martyr which makes thousands of converts and shines all over the world, not the death of Nurse Cavell, but the anonymous death of X.Y.Z., the death of hundreds and hundreds of unknown heroes who will die under the whip or in the darkness of their cells in the German prison camps.
I had almost forgotten a last distinction between the old and the new forms of slavery: The average slave driver of past days was only a trader who sold human beings instead of selling oxen or sheep. When his trade was prohibited, he took heavy risks and ran great danger of losing his fortune and his life. But the German rulers of Belgium, whether they be in Brussels or in Berlin, whether we call them von Bissing or Helfferich, live in the comfort of their homes, surrounded by their families, and when assailed by protests, can still play hide and seek around the broken pillars of the Temple of Peace and wave arrogantly, like so many flags, the torn articles of international law: "I assert," said Dr. Helfferich in the Reichstag (December 2nd)—"I assert that setting the Belgian unemployed to work is thoroughly consonant with international law. We therefore take our stand, formally and in practice, on international law, making use of our undoubted rights."
Let Dr. Helfferich beware. He is not the only judge on international law. His stand may come crashing down.
[!-- Note Anchor 5 --][Footnote 5: I should ask the reader to confront this declaration with the statement made by the Belgian workmen in their appeal to the working classes of the world. "On the Western Front they force them, by the most brutal means, to dig trenches, construct aviation grounds...."
In his letter sent to the Belgian Ministers to the Vatican and to Spain, Baron Beyens, the Belgian Minister for Foreign Affairs, says: "The men are sent to occupied France to construct sets of trenches and a strategic railway, Lille-Aulnaye-Givet."
Among many trustworthy reports, we hear that the 5th Zivilisten-Bataillon, including some men of Ghent and Alost, has been forced to work, under threat of death, on the construction of a strategic railway between Laon and Soissons. Some of the men, exhausted by the bad treatment inflicted upon them, have been sent back to Belgium in a critical condition, and have written a full statement relating their experiences, signed by twenty of them. On the other hand, the Belgian General Headquarters report that Belgian civilians, obliged to dig trenches and dug-outs near Becelaere (West Flanders), were exposed to the fire of the English guns.]