The Better Germany in War Time: Being Some Facts Towards Fellowship

by Harold W. Picton

After leaving Lille, and during my subsequent journey through Northern France and Belgium, I had the opportunity to note the dealings of the Germans with the population of these invaded lands.

After the numerous accounts of monstrous atrocities which were perpetrated over there, I hardly dare to mention here that personally I did not meet with any of these. I do not mean to imply by this that atrocities have not happened, but simply that it has been my good fortune not to come across any.

At Lille itself, the Germans behaved decently when once in occupation. Posters were put on the walls of the town inviting the population to keep quiet. It is true that a few days later fresh bills appeared, worded in very peremptory fashion, warning the inhabitants to keep away from the bridges, railways, and so forth, under penalty of death for disobedience. However, to my knowledge, no disturbances occurred. There, as elsewhere, the Germans tried to reorganise ordinary life as quickly as possible; they helped to put out fires and to restore quiet and order amongst the civilians.

At Maubeuge I met with a similar state of affairs, though I came to this town to find that my father, one of the citizens, had only the day before come out of prison, where the Germans had kept him for 28 days; on a false charge of trying to incite the inhabitants of Maubeuge against the Germans, he and two other men had been arrested. According to their own account the three of them were given a very fair trial and were acquitted. My father did not in any way complain of the treatment he had met with.

I must admit, however, that the three prisoners did not all speak of their adventure in the same spirit. My father, always quiet and cool-headed by nature, resolved to make the best of a bad job, and having obtained paper and ink, wrote about half of a book whilst in prison. He found the food wholesome, though not always plentiful, and asked my mother after his release, to make him a pea soup like that he had had in his cell. The other two, however, one a mere lad, the other an old-maidish man of 50, complained bitterly of the food and other things. While narrating his part of the story the middle-aged man turned to me exclaiming: “Why, your father, no one would believe that he is a good bit over 60. He took it all so quietly, just as if he were still a young man!”

I could not but infer from this that in times of such great crisis and passion a man over there in the invaded parts is often treated by “the enemy” according to the way in which he himself behaves towards the so-called “enemy.” Coolness of head and courtesy on the one side more often than not met with the same qualities on the other side.

I suspect it was this, that, after the trial of the three, caused the President of the Court to apologise to my father, who had proved himself a man, but not to think of doing so to the two other prisoners, who had been more sheepish than human.

On the average, the relations between the Germans and the inhabitants, from stories I have heard and facts I have witnessed, might roughly be summed up in the following statement:

Arrogance, temper, haughtiness on the one side, provoke arrogance, temper and haughtiness on the other; while quietness and coolness of one party inspire the other with the same quietness and moderation. Provided we bear in mind that it takes less to provoke the victor than to provoke the vanquished, that it is more easy for the former to indulge in his temper without fear of consequences. I do not think that the atrocities perpetrated by the Germans in Belgium, the true ones as they came to my knowledge, and not the false ones which have been spread by the Press, have proved in any way that the Germans have passed the bounds of all that has been known in previous wars, and have deserved to be banned and thrust outside the pale of humanity.

In this article I have endeavoured to give a fair account of my journey and to relate facts I have witnessed as they have impressed themselves upon my mind. I have done so not to pass judgment upon some of my fellow-creatures at such times of overheated passions, but merely in order to present to Socialists and Pacifists the enormity of their task after the war, such as I have felt it over there.