In constant view of such trickery how could a neutral attitude of mind or heart be retained?
The men of the American Alimentation Commission came to Belgium as friendly towards Germany as towards any other nation. Several of them, indeed, were somewhat biased in favour of the Prussian army, and all as prone as were we ourselves, in the beginning, to doubt the accounts of their atrocities. But before they left I believe there was not one whose last trace of respect for the occupying Powers was not destroyed by what he had witnessed with his own eyes during his sojourn in the country. Very many, as the world knows, lost no time, after leaving Belgium, to reveal their outraged sentiments by joining the Allied forces. Even before America came in, several of these gave their lives in fighting a wrong they were forced to recognize, despite their original determination to view all from a fair war-basis, and not be influenced by mere hearsay.
And yet these men were more closely associated with the German officials than with Belgians. Their duties necessitated constant intercourse with the Government, and with those whose influence might easily have counterbalanced Belgian accusations. Those stationed in the étape regions were constantly accompanied by a sub-officer. Day and night each had his “nurse,” as the boys called these military supervisors, at his side; ate with him, travelled with him, and slept near him! What more natural than that so intimate an association should strengthen their original admiration for the German army? But facts were too flagrantly against it. Little by little incidents, at first regarded as awful but possibly legitimate features of war, led to others, illegitimate and of enraging significance, gradually destroying, in these fair-minded men, all sympathy with the Central Powers.
As year followed year they saw these soi-disant defenders of their “Vaterland” bleeding a helpless country, and clinging, at all cost and by any means, to territory won through the use of poisonous gas and burning oil—brutalities never before known, and all fore-prepared, while the world was dreaming of peace!—saw them draining broken Belgium by outrageous taxation, and requisition of every kind, while doing their utmost to create internal strife between the Flemings and Walloons.
Very few neutrals at first could gauge the situation correctly in Brussels, where German argument and German lies were predominant. It was only their actions that opened our eyes, and the extraordinary advantages they so quickly attained, which gave evidence of an inexorable and vandalistic plan that could not have been brought to such perfection in a few months, nor even in a few years.
Only a fool or an all-forgiving angel could have lived under that domination and retained sympathy or respect for the nation it represented. Although noble individuals in Germany were probably as adverse as we to its pitiless barbarity and craft, the fact that no united voice in that great and prosperous country was raised against it, suggested that their number was too small to be of any avail. The first easy victories, the violation and crushing of a neutral land, seemed to have eclipsed the soul and intelligence of a people formerly so proud of their culture.
IX
