And how make sure that only those who had money should pay for their bread, while all who had not should be reached? The solution was simple compared to the distribution of relief after the San Francisco earthquake and fire, for example, in our own land, where a scantier population makes social organisation comparatively loose.
The people to be relieved were in their homes. Belgium is so old a country, her population so dense, and she is so much like one big workshop, that the Government must keep a complete set of books. Every Belgian is registered and docketed. You know just how he makes his living and where he lives. Upon marriage a Belgian gets a little book, giving his name and his wife’s, their ages, their occupations, and address. As children are born their names are added. A Belgian holds as fast to this book as a woman to a piece of jewellery that is an heirloom.
With few exceptions, Belgian local officials had not fled the country. They realised that this was a time when they were particularly needed on the job to protect the people from German exactions and from their own rashness. There were also any number of volunteers. The thing was to get the food to them and let them organise local distribution.
The small force of Americans required to oversee the transit must both watch that the Germans did not take any of the food and retain both British and German confidence in the absolute good faith of their intentions. The volunteers got their expenses and the rest of their reward was experience; and it was “some experience” as a Belgian said, who was learning a little American slang. They talked about canal-boat cargoes as if they had been from Buffalo to Albany on the Erie Canal for years; they spoke of “my province” and compared bread lines and the efficiency of local officials. And the Germans took none of the food; orders from Berlin were obeyed. Berlin knew that any requisitioning of relief supplies meant that the Relief Commission would cease work and announce to the world the reason.
However many times the Americans were arrested they must be patient. That exception who said, when he was put in a cell overnight because he entered the military zone by mistake, that he would not have been treated that way in England, needed a little more coaching in preserving his mask of neutrality. For I must say that nine out of ten of these young men, leaning over backward to be neutral, were pro-Ally, including some with German names. But publicly you could hardly get an admission out of them that there was any war. As for Harvard, 1914, hand a passport carried around the Sphinx’s neck and you have him done in stone.
Fancy any Belgian trying to get him to carry a contraband letter or a German commander trying to work him for a few sacks of flour! When I asked him what career he had chosen he said, “Business!” without any waste of words. I think that he will succeed in a way to surprise his family. It is he and all those young Americans of which he is a type, as distinctive of America in manner, looks, and thought as a Frenchman is of France or a German of Germany, who carried the torch of Peace’s kindly work into war-ridden Belgium. They made you want to tickle the eagle on the throat so he would let out a gentle, well-modulated scream, of course, strictly in keeping with neutrality.
Red lanterns took the place of red flags swung by Landsturm sentries on the run to Brussels as darkness fell. There was no relaxation of watchfulness at night. All the twenty-four hours the systematic conquerors held the net tight. Once when my companion repeated his “Again!” and held out the pass in the lantern’s rays, I broke into a laugh, which excited his curiosity, for you soon get out of the habit of laughing in Belgium.
“It has just occurred to me that my guidebook states that passports are not required in Belgium!” I explained.
The editor of that guidebook will have a busy time before he issues the next edition. For example, he will have a lot of new information about Malines, whose ruins were revealed by the motor lamps in shadowy, broken walls on either side of the main street. Other places where less damage had been done were equally silent. In the smaller towns and villages the population must keep indoors at night; for egress and ingress are more difficult to control there than in large cities, where guards at every corner suffice—watching, watching, these disciplined pawns of remorselessly efficient militarism; watching every human being in Belgium.
“The last time I saw that statue of Liége,” I remarked, peering into the darkness as we rode into the city, “the Legion of Honour conferred by France on Liége for its brave defence was hung on its breast. I suppose it is gone now.”