The rumour ran through Brussels from end to end as with the swift vibrations that at such times shake the sensitive organism of all Latin cities. Nobody who was there will ever forget the torrential and swirling crowds before the Gare du Nord, the fierce cheers and the foreboding silence. The peace of eighty years was broken. Honour and the law of Europe had summoned Belgium into the red ways of war; she went singing and unafraid, but the vision of blood was not hidden from her or from us. As we stood on the café tables roaring “La Brabançonne” we knew that there was a midnight to traverse before the dawn. But we did not know that the upbuilding of three generations of human labour was to be broken by three months of scientific brutality. We did not know that Belgium was passing into her Gethsemane.
On the same day von Emmich had marched his columns across the Rubicon that divides honour from infamy. On the same day some hours later Sir Edward Grey had drawn the sword, and flung away the scabbard.
UNDER THE HEEL OF THE HUN
I.—A World Adrift
Brussels, August 5, 1914.
All Europe is a study in strain. The unexpected swing of events has brought Belgium—Belgium which for eighty years has lived only for a neutral independence—to the centre of the arena. The Waterloo of 1914, as that of 1815, may very well be fought on Belgian soil.
It is impossible to exaggerate the sincere amazement of the man in the street, the man in the café. “We have gorged the Albuches with money. They have blacklegged us in business. We are stuffed with them—bah! our national life is choked with these German sausages. And now! Traitors, cowards, violators of honour and the free Belgian frontier!”
The anti-German feeling is heating rapidly to a frenzy. No more demi-Munichs in the restaurants. Even if the beer be of German nativity, which is sometimes a little in doubt, it must be sold as Belgian. The more discreet patrons had already painted out, or draped in patriotic bunting, all advertisements for German products. But the ruse was not general nor always successful. The window-breakers had already appeared, waving the tricolour, chanting “La Brabançonne.” Every street, and, indeed, every buttonhole, has blossomed as suddenly as the staff of Tannhäuser. Cockades, rosettes, bows, the tricolours of France and Belgium, the red, white and blue of England, flower inexplicably into being. At ten centimes a time we manifest our sympathies, and make dazzling fortunes for the street-sellers.
At the house of a public official one finds a sort of synopsis of the general desolation. The family has just scrambled back from Switzerland. The eldest son, a captain of engineers, had already left for the front, ordered to action too urgently to wait even for a last handshake, a last kiss. His children cannot go out to breathe the air because the governess is German, and therefore liable to patriotic assault. The household is keyed up to any disaster.