Belgians Under the German Eagle

by Jean Massart

The Flight of the Belgians.

The inhabitants of our towns and our countryside soon realized to what they were exposing themselves if they awaited the arrival of the Germans in their own homes. So, as the Germans advanced, a void appeared before them. After the taking of Antwerp, the majority of the peasants of the "Campine" of Antwerp fled in all haste toward Holland. If to them we add the people of Antwerp, who had been driven out by the bombardment, and above all the innumerable villages of Brabant, Limburg, and the provinces of Liége and Antwerp, whose homes had been pillaged and reduced to ashes, we shall not be astonished to find that in October there were more than a million Belgian refugees in Holland.[30] To our northern neighbours we owe our profoundest gratitude for the fraternal manner in which they welcomed our unfortunate compatriots.

The Causes of the Famine.

The horror provoked by the butchery at Dinant, Aerschot, etc., relegated to the background the purely material crimes. But these—the pillage, methodically conducted, of our towns, villages, farms, and châteaux—the outrageous requisitions of provisions and of the raw material of industries—the formidable taxes which drain us of coin—the fines which rain upon the communal administrations and on private persons—and many other infractions of the Hague Convention—have exercised on our economical life an extremely depressing effect, but have produced no echo abroad: doubtless because only those can understand the whole extent of our misery who daily rub shoulders with the thousands of starving and unemployed people who drag themselves from one end of the town to the other in quest of work that is not to be found, or who mingle with the interminable files of women who go in search of rations of bread and soup for their families.

Let us briefly consider the principal causes of famine which prevails in Belgium.

1. Exaggerated requisitions, out of all proportion to the resources of the country. They are of two kinds:—

Firstly, those which have emptied the country of grain, cattle, forage, and other foodstuffs.

Then the requisitions of the raw materials intended for the factories, which have completely paralysed industry, especially in the Flanders. One example will suffice. All the workshops of Termonde were burned save one—the Escaut-Dendre establishment, which makes boots and shoes. But the Germans sent into Germany both the leather and the shoes which were in the warehouse. The factory is thus condemned to stand idle for lack of raw material, and also for lack of funds. Those industries of which the machinery has been removed are also, of course, doomed to paralysis. The German authorities threaten to despoil our factories of all the copper forming part of the machinery, which would reduce them one and all to impotence. It is an ironical fact that this measure was announced by a propagandist leaflet addressed to the Belgians.

2. Having made a clean sweep of the greater portion of all that was indispensable to us, the Germans have been careful to take our money from us. Under every imaginable pretext, and often without any pretext at all, they have imposed crushing taxes upon us. The regular payment of these taxes showing that the public coffers were not yet quite empty, the Germans hastened to impose fines upon us, which vary from 5 frs. to 5 millions. The private banks, too, are threatened every moment with the removal of a portion of their funds.