In regard to the last-mentioned outrage, the feeling in Brussels was no less bitter than it must have been in France, and doubtless throughout the entire world. Our papers presented us daily with triumphant descriptions of the terror and devastation caused to the inhabitants of Paris, even stating that the city was being generally evacuated. The Zeppelin had not taught Germany that her uncivilized methods of war served merely to create large and indomitable armies in the opposing nations, once so little prepared for war and so lacking in enthusiasm!
By the time our beds were demanded, and armed men forced their way even into the poorest homes to rob the cold and hungry Belgians of their last remnant of comfort, the change in the soldiers’ sentiments became even more marked. Beds were taken, often from under the owners before they had risen in the morning, but in many cases there was a noticeable indifference shown by those who did the looting. The men who came to our house only took two mattresses, and made no attempt to search for wool that was hidden. One of them expressed very bitterly his distaste for the duty imposed on him, and said, among other startling remarks: “The whole war is an outrage imposed upon us Germans by our leaders, who must pay for it some day not far distant”! Another, whom I met in a shop, told me that if he had not a wife and little children in Germany he would never return to the Vaterland he had been falsely lured to protect. At mention of the Kaiser, he exclaimed savagely: “Kaiser!—Ach, der Kaiser!—Wait until the troops get back to Germany! There will be an accounting then!” and drew his finger significantly across his throat.
It was unspeakably pathetic at this time to see the war-weary, ill-clad, and under-fed German troops returning from the front to Brussels; especially those called back to the trenches, after a rest too brief to revive their strength, or dim their recollection of horrors endured. These poor, heavily laden slaves, many so young, with a look of yearning for home in their wide, helpless eyes, called for sympathy despite the wrong they represented. No voice acclaimed them, as they strode through a hating city to give up their lives for a monstrous error; but many of those who watched forgot, for a moment, past suffering to express a word of compassion unheard, alas, by those columns of desperate human beings—beings forced back to be massacred on foreign land, merely for the vanity of their ruler—merely that the German Kaiser’s long-cherished and carefully perfected military toy might avoid the disgrace even then inevitable! It was galling to better-class Belgians to note about this time a certain friendliness developing between the German soldiers and common people. At the markets, where soldiers swarmed, it was no rare sight to see girls hanging to their arms, and even older women talking and joking with them. The reason of this was not indifference to all that Belgium had suffered at German hands, but because to these people the soldiers spoke more openly. By dint of constant association they learned that all Germans were not criminals, that many hundreds of the men had been ignorant of the true situation—men who, awaking too late, were conscious of the injustice done and bitter against the power that had deceived and enslaved them.
This recalls a confession made to me, long before, by a man who had lived in Belgium for twenty years, but, being still a German citizen, was called back to the army at the outbreak of war. When approaching the Belgian frontier he and others hesitated, demanding why they were being led into Belgium, and were told that France had violated the country’s neutrality, and the Belgians had called upon Germany to defend her! Only when facing Belgian troops, they realized they had been deceived; and to hesitate then meant being shot by their own men.
Despised as the German race was, and probably will be for many generations to come, nevertheless their long-suffering victims were large-spirited enough to recognize the worthiness of individuals, and not hold them responsible for their nation’s crimes. But better qualities were shown only by the later troops brought from Germany to fill vast gaps in the original army hurled to death en masse during the first mad effort. These entered the hideous strife when even their leaders were beginning to tremble before the gigantic storm of vengeance they had roused through the whole civilized world. And even these probably did not know the whole of their nation’s guilt. At least, one tries to believe they did not; for to think that so great a number of civilized beings could have continued the conflict if aware, from the very beginning, of their leaders’ barbarous devices, would destroy one’s faith in the stability of civilization. It seems impossible that thinking and, more or less, educated men could countenance the illegitimate aerial assaults on English and French towns; those cowardly and inexcusable air attacks upon Paris which began in the very first month of the war and continued, without mercy, to the end. The glorious capital of France now presents a mass of wounds in her very centre—in cherished localities sacred to all the world, such as the great cathedral of Notre-Dame, on which a bomb was dropped as early as October 1914, before adequate protection could be prepared! It seems as though no reasoning mind could be cognizant of these wrongs without being impressed with the conviction that right was on the side of those nations whose courage was unbroken by mean and unlawful assaults, viler than history has ever before recorded. England did not waver, and France did not waver; every dastardly blow inflicted by Germany only increased their righteous wrath; and the armies returning from the scene where their defeat was already inevitable were beginning to realize how justifiable was that wrath.
They had seen thousands upon thousands of their fellows brought back mangled from invaded countries the holding of which meant nothing to them; had read the long lists of dead, and began to wonder what it was all for. On several occasions I have heard the soldiers ask that question with a look of puzzled wonder in their eyes, more eloquent than the words, “Wofür ist eigentlich die ganze Sache?”
Can their rulers answer it in a manner satisfactory to these men? Can they answer it who, safely removed from the hell into which they drove them, continued to cry: “We must go on! We must fight to our last man rather than lose an inch of what we have gained! Victory shall be ours, for God is with us”? It can only be hoped that the Almighty whom they blasphemed by that diabolic decision, will not hold those responsible who, in blind loyalty, obeyed it with the sacrifice of their young and promising lives.