There is one part of Brussels which has never been properly occupied—the part which lies on the other side of the port and of the Bassin Vergote, the so-called Marolle, the East End of the Belgian capital. During the first month of the occupation the Kommandantur tried to establish a proper military police service there, as in the other quarters of the town; but each night several of the men in the patrol disappeared, and often a full patrol would meet a similar end.
The Brussels apaches have always been armed with long thin knives, and they took no notice of the order to give up all arms to the police. As the high powers of Berlin did not want a wholesale imprisonment or the destruction of the entire quarter, which would have been the only remedy, the Kommandantur has compromised. The Marolle is occupied during the day, and free during the night. Patrols go through it in daylight, but when evening comes they cross the water and retire into the old "Luna Park," now converted into a large prison and barracks.
The high and smartest part of the town is completely given up to the Germans. The Palais de la Nation, and the Palais du Roe, the beautiful Palais des Beaux Arts, and the colossal Palais de Justice, are the headquarters of the German Government of Belgium. New German inscriptions tell the new uses of the palaces, and, what is rather important, no reference is made to a temporary government of Belgium; the inscriptions simply say, "German Empire—Government of the Belgian Provinces."
Near the Palais de Justice, which occupies a dominating position on a hill almost in the centre of the town, twenty large siege guns have been placed, and near them artillery officers and men connected with the Kommandantur by a camp telephone are ready to pour on the quiet town death and destruction should the necessity of subduing riots arise.
The most important monuments, art galleries, and churches are said to be mined, and the German authorities do not deny the rumour.
On the boulevards and down the beautiful Avenue Louise, at the Cinquantenaire, and at the Bois de la Cambre, generally full of smart people, of horse-riders, and of carriages and motor-cars, there are now only old Landsturm soldiers drilling and very young officers riding, often accompanied by ladies, who, even in this the smartest of sports, cannot get rid of a certain Teutonic awkwardness.
The German nation has always been celebrated for her immoderate liking for issuing long and complicated notices, warnings which are possible only in Germany because in no other country would people take the trouble to read them.
In Belgium this mania has reached its highest possible point. On the ruins of the dead cities and on the trees in the open country, on the gates of the gardens, and on the milestones of the country roads, everywhere where there is space enough, the German Government has posted notices, printed in three languages—German, Flemish, and French—headed with the German eagle and signed by the Governor-General.
Brussels is covered with a sort of incrustation of old and new official notices; notices about closing time for shops and cafés, about grouping in the streets, about meetings in clubs, about drinking spirits, about singing forbidden songs, about buying or selling forbidden stuff, about keeping arms, photographic cameras, or maps, about detaining gold instead of giving it up to the banks, about giving hospitality to refugees or foreigners, about everything on earth.
The list of things "verboten" would probably take more than a full page, but what is most insisted upon and is the subject of five or six different notices is the introduction of foreign papers into Belgium and the sale, or possession, of newspapers of any kind besides the ones sold openly in Belgium, a full list of which is given.