The authority alluded to expressed the opinion that the line of the Meuse could now be held, but that the crucial trial of strength would occur when the main bodies of the two field armies met in the open.
What was of no less interest, as showing the elaborate methods adopted by the Germans for years beforehand, was Dr. E.J. Dillon's account of the Germans in Belgium before and after the outbreak of war. Dr. Dillon telegraphed from Brussels on Sunday, August 9th:
It is a noteworthy fact that during the fierce fighting of the past few days a disproportionately large number of officers as compared with privates were disabled owing to their distinctive uniforms, and among the officers were a disproportionately large percentage of surgeons, whose uniform is still more conspicuous. The War Minister's attention is being drawn to the advisability of rendering the outward marks of rank differences less noticeable at a distance.
The Belgian Government has decided not to proceed to the expulsion of Germans en masse, although the country is infested by spies and agents, who make desperate efforts to reveal and frustrate the plans of the military authorities. In the German Consulate and the German school wireless telegraphy apparatus were discovered. At Antwerp, where the Germans had for years wielded paramount influence, many of them repaid the hospitality shown them with perfidious hostility.
Two sons of the principal German firm in Antwerp, which has been established for over twenty years there, have been arrested on a charge of treason. Even the School of Aviation had trusted a caretaker of German nationality, who has occupied this and similar posts for eighteen years, and was discovered on Friday working the wireless telegraph apparatus. He was arrested, tried, and condemned.
Nowhere in Belgium were the Germans more at home than in Antwerp; nowhere have they proved such relentless enemies to their hosts. When quitting the city on Friday some of them exclaimed, "We are going now, but we will return shortly escorted by troops." The bitterness against Germany in Antwerp is intense, but there and throughout Belgium the German prisoners and wounded are treated with the utmost consideration.
The Germans, who were hospitably received in Holland, fed, and sent home, were not, as the Belgian Press believed, soldiers, but fugitive civilians. Holland has scrupulously discharged her duties as a neutral State.
The Flemish population of Belgium is making heroic sacrifices for the struggle, which has only been begun. The smiling suburbs of Antwerp, with their gardens, lawns, thickets, and luxurious villas, are being disfigured beyond recognition in order to meet the requirements of the military strategists, and the owners look on with grim approval at the destruction of their cherished property.
The narrative of how the neutrality of Luxemburg was violated is interesting. On Sunday morning while I was painfully travelling through Bavaria towards the Rhine the population of Luxemburg awakened to find all the ways of communication in German hands. Everywhere detachments of German soldiers were stationed, but what most astonished the simple-minded citizens was this—that the detachments were commanded by the employés of commercial and industrial firms established in Luxemburg who two days previously had been at their offices as usual.
Now, attired in military uniform, they were at the head of bodies of German troops, leading them through the streets, directing them to places where perquisitions might be made or arrests effected, and giving them the benefit of their admirable knowledge of the town and people.
This they did with noteworthy results. Thus they denounced some 200 Alsatians who had not served in the German army, and who naturally reckoned on a safe asylum in neutral Luxemburg. These unfortunate men were roused from their sleep and spirited away, their appeal for humanitarian treatment being answered by violence or threats.
A German major who was first to cross the Adolf Bridge found his way barred by the Cabinet Minister M. Eyschen, who, having arrived in a motor, turned the car lengthwise across the bridge. Taking out a copy of the Berlin Treaty, he showed it to the German officer, who remarked, "I am acquainted with it, but have orders which I must execute." Immediately afterwards the Grand Duchess Marie Adelaide drove up in an automobile, which she also turned lengthwise across the bridge, saying that the neutrality of Luxemburg must be respected, and that she would telegraph to the Kaiser, whereupon the major curtly answered, "You had better go home quietly."