The stubborn, passive resistance and self-sacrifice that I have pictured was that of a moral leadership of a majority shaming the minority; of an ostracism of all who had relations with the enemy. Of course, it was not the spirit of the whole. The American Commission, as charity usually must, had to overcome obstacles set in its path by those whom it would aid. Belgian politicians, in keeping with the weakness of their craft, could no more forego playing politics in time of distress than some that we had in San Francisco and some we have heard of only across the British Channel from Belgium.
Zealous leaders exaggerated the famine of their districts in order to get larger supplies; communities in great need without spokesmen must be reached; powerful towns found excuses for not forwarding food to small villages which were without influence. Natural greed got the better of men used to turning a penny any way they could. Rascally bakers who sifted the brown flour to get the white to sell to pâtisserie shops and the well-to-do while the bread-line got the bran, required shrewd handling, and it was found that the best punishment was to let the public know the pariah part they had played. In fact that soon put a stop to the practice. It meant that the baker's business was ruined and he had lost his friends.
A certain percentage of Belgians, as would happen in any country, saw the invasion only as a visitation of disaster, like an earthquake. A flat country of gardens limits one's horizon. They fell into line with the sentiment of the mass. But as time wore on into the summer and autumn of the second year, some of them began to think, What was the use? German propaganda was active. All that the Allies had cared for Belgium was to use her to check the German tide to Paris and the Channel ports! Perfidious England had betrayed Belgium! German business and banking influences, which had been considerable in Belgium before the war, and the numerous German residents who had returned, formed a busy circle of appeal to Belgian business men, who were told that the British navy stood between them and a return to prosperity. Germany was only too willing that they should resume their trade with the rest of the world.
Why should not Belgium come into the German customs union? Why should not Belgium make the best of her unfortunate situation, as became a practical and thrifty people? But be it a customs union or annexation that Germany plans, the steel had entered the hearts of all Belgians with red corpuscles; and King Albert and his "schipperkes" were still fighting the Germans at Dixmude. A British army appearing before Brussels would end casuistry; and pessimism would pass, and the German residents, too, with the huzzas of all Belgium as the gallant king once more ascended the steps of his palace.
Worthy of England at her best was her consent to allow the Commission's food to pass, which she accompanied by generous giving. She might seem slow in making ready her army—though I do not think that she was—but give she could and give she did. It was a grave question if her consent was in keeping with the military policy which believes that any concession to sentiment in the grim business of war is unwise. Certainly, the Krieg ist Krieg of Germany would not have permitted it.
There is the very point of the war that ought to make any neutral take sides. If the Belgians had not received bread from the outside world, then Germany would either have had to spare enough to keep them from starving or faced the desperation of a people who would fight for food with such weapons as they had. This must have brought a holocaust of reprisals that would have made the orgy of Louvain comparatively insignificant. However much the Germans hampered the Commission with red tape and worse than red tape through the activities of German residents in Belgium, Germany did not want the Commission to withdraw. It was helping her to economize her food supplies. And England answered a human appeal at the cost of hard- and-fast military policy. She was still true to the ideals which have set their stamp on half the world.
XI
Winter In Lorraine
Only a winding black streak, that four hundred and fifty miles of trenches on a flat map. It is difficult to visualize the whole as you see it in your morning paper, or to realize the labour it represents in its course through the mire and over mountain slopes, through villages and thick forests and across open fields.
Every mile of it was located by the struggle of guns and rifles and men coming to a stalemate of effort, when both dug into the earth and neither could budge the other. It is a line of countless battles and broken hopes; of charges as brave as men ever made; a symbol of skill and dogged patience and eternal vigilance of striving foe against striving foe.
From the first, the sector from Rheims to Flanders was most familiar to the public. The world still thinks of the battle of the Marne as an affair at the door of Paris, though the heaviest fighting was from Vitry- le-François eastward and the fate of Paris was no less decided on the fields of Lorraine than on the fields of Champagne. The storming of Rheims Cathedral became the theme of thousands of words of print to one word for the defence of the Plateau d'Amance or the struggle around Lunéville. Our knowledge of the war is from glimpses through the curtain of military secrecy which was drawn tight over Lorraine and the Vosges, shrouded in mountain mists. This is about Lorraine in winter, when the war was six months old.