The weather has cleared. The equinox would seem to have spent its showers, and the bloody and desperate pause on the Aisne should soon be resolved to our advantage. The moment that happens the “pistol of Antwerp” will go off. But the revenge is not yet.
It ought to be remembered that Belgium is one of the allied countries which had to sacrifice, and did sacrifice without a murmur, her richly beautiful capital, to the large strategical game which General Joffre has played with such brilliant success. She has since rejected temptations to peace offered under flag of truce at Antwerp by the Germans. With a noble faith and restraint she has put herself last, and the law of Europe first.
Meantime the Germans are reported to spend most of their time digging trenches north of Brussels. A very interesting traveller, who has just got back from the capital, tells us that the invaders call the Belgians “the little black rats,” because of the effectiveness with which our pioupious pop up, pick off their men, and pop down again into invulnerability.
At Brussels French newspapers find their subterranean way through the whole population. The Hunnish attempt to kill knowledge of facts as they are born has been a gross failure. According to this witness, the whole temper of the population has changed. They have “learned the great language, caught the clear accent” of that magnificent Burgomaster of theirs, with the explosive name, M. Max. They no longer allow themselves to be bullied.
President Wilson once wrote that in order to be moral you must cultivate the feeling that somebody is always looking on. In Brussels the American Minister, Mr. Brand Whitlock, is looking on. As lawyer, politician, and novelist, he possesses a triple intensity of vision. There will be no Termondes while that eye is levelled.
One is glad to say that, amid the general softness and protestations, King Albert’s Government is standing for the salutary, strong law. At Sempst, near Malines, yesterday a German trooper was captured in a farmyard, in which he had just killed two children. He was taken to Waelhem, the facts were briefly established, and, without further ado, he was shot.
I notice that the Right Hon. G. W. E. Russell asks in The Daily News if we have the right to kill. Have we the right to spare? One thing we cannot escape from: the duty to punish. Nobody talks of revenge, or vindictiveness, or cruelty. But since we are fighting for justice, and since the gospel of murder—murder of the body and of the spirit—has been loosed against Europe, we have no choice.
We cannot restore Louvain, but we can give back to Belgium the glory of her own Rubens now exiled in the great gallery of Munich. We cannot call back Rheims out of its smoke of dissolution, but we can put Cologne again under the care of civilised France. We must not spoil or ravage one monument of humane effort, religious or secular, in Germany. But the Denkmal at Bingen has got to go, and the Column of Insolence at Berlin has got to go. Mr. Lowes Dickinson has said that Germany must not be humiliated. Not Germany, but Prussia must be humiliated. Berlin militarism must pass under the Caudine Forks, and the forks must be set so low as to sweep the spike of the helmet as it passes.
I saw a mad Belgian soldier taken away from the Ostend Infirmary a few days ago. Of course, I don’t know, of my own personal observation, why he went mad. But one of the attendants told me that the soldier told him that he had remained the only survivor of a Belgian patrol which had repelled the attack of a much heavier German advance post. Reinforcements arrived; all his comrades were killed, and he was taken prisoner. His captors roped him up against a tree, in the posture of crucifixion, but without lifting his feet from the ground.
A firing party was ordered to take its stand at the usual twelve paces. Time after time their rifles went up to the “present!” Sometimes a volley was at that moment fired behind him. At last he was cut down; somehow or other he scrambled within reach of the Red Cross. They were very kind to him in Ostend, but he kept on babbling about crucifixions and a crucifixion near Jerusalem.