People who are leading a quiet life and who enjoy the blessings of an autonomous Government will perhaps not appreciate the importance which the Belgians attach, at the present moment, to these patriotic manifestations. They may imagine that, so long as national life is assured and citizens are otherwise left alone by their conquerors, public affirmation of loyalty to King and country is of secondary importance.
God knows that the economic situation of occupied Belgium is bad enough, and the endless and tragic lists of condemnations and deportations are there to prove that her people are living under the most barbarous regime of modern times. But, even if this was not the case, anybody with the slightest knowledge of their national character would understand the extraordinary value which the Belgians attached to their last privilege and the deep indignation roused by this German betrayal.
Von Bissing shrugs his shoulders and calls them "big children." So they are. And his son, with a scornful smile, declares in the Suddeutsche Monatschrift (April 15th, 1915) that it is in "the people's blood to demonstrate and to wear cockades." So it is. The love of processions and public pageants of all kinds is deeply rooted in Belgian traditions. But what does it prove? Simply that the people have preserved enough freshness and joy of life to care for these things, enough courage and independence to feel most need of them when they are most afflicted. This is how they think of it: "Our bands used to pass through the streets, shaking our window-panes with the crashing of their trombones, our flags used to wave in the breeze—in the happy days of peace. Should we now remain, silent and withdrawn, in the selfish privacy of our houses, now that the country needs us most, now that we want, more than ever, to feel that we are one people and that we will remain independent and united whatever happens in the future?" Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Bissing sneers at the Belgians because on any and every pretext they display the American colours. If they do, it is because they are not allowed to display their own, and because they feel somehow that the best way to show that they have still a flag is to adopt the colours of the great country which has so generously come to their help. It may well be, as the Baron informs us, that most of the "small and big children" who wear the Stars and Stripes do not know a word of English. What does it mean again? Simply that heart may call to heart and that it is not necessary to talk in his own language to understand a brother's mind. It is true that only children—children small and big—know how to do it.
If the Germans had had the least touch of generous feeling for the unfortunate country upon which they thrust war in spite of the most solemn treaties, they would not have obliged the Belgian citizens to lower the flags which they had put up during the defence of Liège, they would not have torn their tricolour cockades from their buttonholes, they would not have silenced their national songs, they would not have added these deep humiliations to the bitter cup of defeat. One wonders even why they did it if it was not for the mere pleasure which the bully is supposed to feel when he makes his strength felt by his victim. They might have gone on gaily plundering the country, shooting patriots, deporting young men, doing whatever seemed useful in their eyes. But the petty tyranny of these measures passes understanding. Governor von Bissing is certainly too clever to believe that the satisfaction of making a few cowards uneasy by such regulations can at all outweigh the danger inherent in the resentment and the deep hatred which the bullying has aroused against Germany. You may take the children's bread, you may take their freedom, but you might at least leave them a few toys to play with, and you would be wise to do so.
Such narrow-minded tyranny always defeats its own objects. Burgomaster Max's proud answer to General von Luttwitz's "advice" to remove the flags became the password of the patriots. Every Bruxellois henceforth "waited for the hour of reparation." A great number of women went to prison rather than remove the emblems of Belgium which they wore. Stories passed from lip to lip. Their accuracy I would not guarantee, but they belong to the epic of the war and are true to the spirit of the people. A young lady, who was jeered at by a German officer because she was wearing King Albert's portrait, is said to have answered his "Lackland" with, "I would rather have a King who has lost his country than an Emperor who has lost his honour." Another lady, sitting in a tram-car opposite a German officer, was ordered by him to remove her tricolour rosette. She refused to do so, and, as he threatened her, defied him to do it himself. The Boche seized the rosette and pulled .. and pulled .. and pulled. The lady had concealed twenty yards of ribbon in her corsage.
When the tricolour was forbidden altogether, it was replaced by the ivyleaf, ivy being the emblem of faithfulness; later, the ivyleaf was followed by a green ribbon, green being the colour of hope. The Brabançonne being excluded from the street and from the school took refuge in the Churches, where it is played and often sung by the congregation at the end of the service. There are many ways of getting round the law. The Belgians were forbidden to celebrate in any ordinary way the anniversary of their independence. Thanks to a sort of tacit arrangement they succeeded in marking the occasion in spite of all regulations. On July 21st, 1915, the Bruxellois kept the shutters of their houses and shops closed and went out in the streets dressed in their best clothes, most of them in mourning. The next year, as the closing of shops was this time foreseen by the administration, they remained open. But a great number of tradespeople managed ingeniously to display the national colours in their windows—by the juxtaposition, for instance, of yellow lemons, red tomatoes and black grapes. Others emptied their windows altogether.
These jokes may seem childish, at first sight, but when we think that those who dared perform them paid for it with several months' imprisonment or several thousand marks, and paid cheerily, we understand that there is more in them than a schoolboy's pranks. It seems as if the Belgian spirit would break if it ceased to be able to react. One of the shop-managers who was most heavily fined on the occasion of our last "Independence Day" declared that he had not lost his money: "It is rather expensive, but it is worth it."
If patriotism has become a religion in Belgium, this religion has found a priest whose authority is recognised by the last unbeliever. If every church has become the "Temple de la Patrie," if the Brabançonne resounds under the Gothic arches of every nave, Cardinal Mercier has become the good shepherd who has taken charge of the flock during the King's absence. The great Brotherhood, for which so many Christian souls are yearning, in which there are no more classes, parties, and sects, seems well nigh achieved beyond the electrified barbed wire of the Belgian frontier. Are not all Belgians threatened with the same danger, are they not close-knit by the same hope, the same love, the same hatred?