I have often wondered, had England been the invader and tactful Britons—such as those who won the confidence even of the Boers and of all the Indian tribes—had been the masters of Belgium, what would have been their influence, in the end, upon a people weary of suffering, whose original faith in ultimate triumph was being extinguished month by month. Many might have been won by kindness even from the hand that had smitten them; indeed, had the enemy thereafter shown them even ordinary consideration, it is rather terrible to think what the consequence might have been during a period of subjection far longer than the least sanguine could have anticipated.
In November 1917 news of the Italian disaster, grossly exaggerated, was published in three languages on all the city walls, with galling comments and childish boasts. Attention was called to the fact that the Central Powers had won from Italy, in three days, all that she had acquired in two years, and so forth. No chance was lost to dishearten the Belgian people, though, considering their absolutely helpless condition, the object of this is hard to imagine. It can only be understood as the same shortsighted and unnecessary bullying which a British soldier later told me he had endured for seven months when a prisoner in Germany. This poor fellow, a New Zealander, who had volunteered “for Belgium’s sake”—one of the many half-starved and filthy heroes who swarmed to Brussels when freed of their chains—recounted horrors of his prison existence almost beyond belief. Besides being obliged to work for the military advantage of their enemies, they were crowded together in such numbers that to sit down in their place of confinement was impossible; and when sleeping at night, they were obliged to lie one on top of the other. The heat and vermin were so intolerable, that a large percentage of them died, and all were forced to discard their clothing, in order to fight lice that swarmed over them “like a grey covering of dust”! But into those ghastly details I have no heart to go. I only refer to this one of innumerable stories, because of a feature that illustrates the ignoble and needless bullying practised by the Prussian officials. This man stated that their presiding officer not only obliged them to salute him with the utmost humility, but made them wait upon him as slaves. He would deliberately drop his pencil to the ground several times, and order a British soldier to return it each time with a subservient obeisance!
In the midst of the discouragement caused by the news from Italy, the new copper raid took place, and an avis appeared requisitioning all dogs above forty centimetres in height. This affiche appeared soon after a tax of forty francs on every dog had been announced—a tax resisted by the Belgian police, who refused to supply the authorities with information as to dog owners. It was said, and the bicycle affair gave weight to the supposition, that the demand for dogs was merely a preliminary to exacting the tax. At any rate, the requisition was either vengeance for opposition, or a means of learning who had dogs; for the matter eventually died out, after causing a panic of grief and the painless slaughtering of many pets, in order to save them from ill-treatment by the army. I went to a vet. for this purpose, and there saw a man of middle age openly weeping, and with him his one remaining home companion—since his wife was dead, and a son lost in battle—a soft-eyed, beautiful Groenendael. Even in the streets women were sobbing, and what occurred in the houses where dogs were cherished, I can only imagine by the distress reigning in ours.
Some time later, another affiche announced that only dogs under four years old would be taken—a correction which came too late, for many hundreds of persons had already sacrificed their animals. But dogs too old for training would only have been an encumbrance to the army; so, after many worthless dogs had been given up, for a small payment, by those who stole or secured them in other ways, this amendment, which would have spared many a heartache, was tardily published.
Our dogs we never declared, and kept in hiding until the matter gradually died down; and so saved them, after many weeks of anxiety and fear, although hundreds were taken day by day. There was some mystery about the whole affair. It can only be explained as another mean scheme for obtaining money, whose failure evoked this method of vengeance, for there was abundance of dogs to be had for army work, without depriving people of their pets.
XII
