The wife of this consul, Mme. de France de Tersant, who left Germany on the 31st July—that is, before the declaration of war, was arrested at Metz and her luggage confiscated. In vain she made application to the military authorities. They refused to receive it and threatened to keep her in custody. However, she obtained permission to continue her journey by horse carriage to Novéant. As she was leaving the soldiers hooted her. At Novéant the driver refused to bring her any further. Then she had to go on foot as far as Pagny-on-the-Moselle, which is the first French village. A peasant at Novéant lent her a wheelbarrow, in which she could put her young child. The peasant consented to push the wheelbarrow.
M. Damier, Russian consul at Frankfurt, was brought by force from his house to a statue of Germania which he was compelled to salute. A howling mob kicked him and struck him with their fists. M. Alberic Néton, Consul-General of France at Düsseldorf, was ordered on the 2nd August by the Chief of Police to leave the town at once. Two officials were stationed before his door with orders not to leave it. On the next day, on his way to the consulate, he could not give them the slip. All the day they kept near him whether he went on foot or rode.
After interminable negotiations with regard to his departure, the Consul-General of France finally left Düsseldorf on the 5th August, bringing with him only a small portmanteau. The destination of the train was the Dutch frontier (Roermont). But at the first station, which is Neuss, an officer in a uniform trimmed with lace came and opened the compartment in which were the consul-general and many other passengers, and informed them that the Dutch line was cut and that they would have to go to Cologne and then to Switzerland.
He had to go to Cologne in a train full of soldiers and in a third-class carriage. During the whole journey the soldiers never ceased to make insulting remarks about France.
At Cologne, the consul-general’s journey was interrupted by the military authorities. He underwent a regular search and had to undress to allow these people to search every bit of his clothing. As he complained of having to submit to such treatment, the German officer said to him, “You will see many other people in the same case as yourself.”
And, in fact, when the search was completed he was brought, carefully escorted, to an hotel of the lowest class, an annexe of the Prefecture of Police, where police officers searched his luggage. M. Néton was kept there three days under police supervision. He was forbidden to communicate with any one outside or to read the newspapers.
“During the third night of our detention,” says the consul-general in his official report of the 10th August, “on Friday, 7th August, a little before midnight, there was a violent knocking at the door of my room. ‘Everybody get up,’ cried a voice; ‘you will be off to Holland in ten minutes.’ Everybody dressed in great haste. We were compelled to get into two military motors, which brought us with all speed to the station. There we were brought to a train which was standing ready, and pushed into a carriage where we were locked in and all the blinds lowered. The signal for departure was given, but none of us knew where we were going.
“At six o’clock in the morning the train stopped. We had just passed Clèves and we were a short distance from the Dutch frontier. To get us over the remaining thirty kilometres the mayor of the place, who had been notified of our arrival, offered to have us driven across in a light trap.
“When we got down from the carriage he demanded of us 14 marks, i.e. about 18 francs.