These are: a few Belgian papers, naturally issued under the vigilant eye of the most particular of censors; some German papers, not all of them, as many are considered much too advanced to be allowed into the hands of Belgian people; and a Rotterdam sheet, which has the privilege of being the only foreign journal allowed into Belgium, a privilege more apparent than real, as the paper is notoriously in German hands.
It will easily be understood how the Belgian population feels more than anything else this complete lack of real news, and how eager they are for the information which is brought in by the few refugees who succeed in going back or by the few foreign papers they manage to smuggle in at great risk and great expense.
The other papers, the ones which are allowed, print the most fantastic news. I was in Brussels the day of the Zeppelin raid on the British coast; the aircraft, according to the news for Belgian consumption, reached London and dropped bombs all over the metropolis. Every day or two a great victory is claimed on either front, and the official reports of foreign countries published in the papers are only mutilated and distorted reductions of the real ones.
To be found in possession of forbidden papers is extremely dangerous.
A gentleman belonging to one of the best Brussels families was given two months' concentration camp for translating articles from The Times, and one of his office clerks, who got hold of the translations and typed them and sold them, had to serve a six months' sentence. In spite of all this, I managed to get a copy of The Times nearly every day, paying for it two francs fifty, which is certainly a fair price, but not too high considering the difficulty of introducing it into Belgium, and that it was generally only two days old.
Up to about two months ago people would gladly pay twenty-five francs for a copy of the paper; refugees and Dutch people used to take it in at great risk, but now with an admirable sense of adaptability, the German soldiers, Custom House officers, and railway employees have organised this delicate service.
They get The Times or the Figaro for twopence at the Dutch frontier and sell it again to some agent in Brussels or straight to the public at a nice profit. One must, of course, be extremely careful in buying papers offered on sale by such people, as this is one of the favourite victim-hunting systems of the numberless spies of the Kommandantur.
In a difficult moment like the present one the Belgian Press, or the part of it which stuck to its place and kept independent from German influence, has assumed a very dignified attitude.
La Belgique, Le Bruxellois, La Patrie, etc., publish the different communiqués, French, German, English, and Russian, but never forget to put, as an undertitle, "As transmitted to us by the Censor." Very often the papers come out with large blank spaces, the whole or part of an article having been censored.