In less moving phrases, but in deadly corroboration, the continuation of the report of Minister Whitlock says:
REPORT OF MINISTER WHITLOCK (continued).
"The rage, the terror, and despair excited by this measure all over Belgium were beyond anything we had witnessed since the day the Germans poured into Brussels. The delegates of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, returning to Brussels, told the most distressing stories of the scenes of cruelty and sorrow attending the seizures. Appalling stories of German behavior. And daily, hourly almost, since that time appalling stories have been related by Belgians coming to the Legation. It is impossible for us to verify them, first, because it is necessary for us to exercise all possible tact in dealing with the subject at all, and secondly because there is no means of communication between the Occupations-Gebiet and the Etappen-Gebiet. Transportation everywhere in Belgium is difficult, the vicinal railways scarcely operating any more because of the lack of oil, while all the horses have been taken. The people who are forced to go from one village to another must do so on foot or in vans drawn by the few miserable horses that are left. The wagons of the breweries, the one institution that the Germans have scrupulously respected, are hauled by oxen.
"The well-known tendency of sensational reports to exaggerate themselves, especially in time of war, and in a situation like that existing here, with no newspapers to serve as a daily clearing house for all the rumours that are as avidly believed as they are eagerly A foul deed. repeated, should of course be considered; but even if a modicum of all that is told is true there still remains enough to stamp this deed as one of the foulest that history records.
"I am constantly in receipt of reports from all over Belgium that tend to bear out the stories one constantly hears of brutality and cruelty. A number of men sent back to Mons are said to be in a dying condition, many of them tubercular. At Malines and at Antwerp returned men have died, their friends asserting that they have been victims of neglect and cruelty, of cold, of exposure, of hunger." (Continued on page 74.)
A vivid sketch of the deportations from Mons, drawn by a participant, may well be cited here:
"The woes of slavery."
"I will take the 18th of November of last year [1916]. A week or so before that a placard was placed on the walls telling my capital city of Mons that in seven days all the men of that city who were not clergymen, who were not priests, who did not belong to the city council, would be deported.
"At half past five, in the gray of the morning on the 18th of November, they walked out, six thousand two hundred men at Mons, myself and another leading them down the cobblestones of the street and out where the rioting would be less than in the great city, with the soldiers on each side, with bayonets fixed, with the women held back.
"The degradation of it! The degradation of it as they walked into this great market square, where the pens were erected, exactly as if they were cattle—all the great men of that province—the lawyers, the statesmen, the heads of the trades, the men that had made the capital of Hainaut glorious during the last twenty years.
"There they were collected; no question of who they were, whether they were busy or what they were doing, or what their position in life. 'Go to the right! Go to the left! Go to the right!' So they were turned to the one side or the other.
"Trains were standing there ready, steaming, to take them to Germany. You saw on the one side the one brother taken, the other brother left. A hasty embrace and they were separated and gone. You had here a man on his knees before a German officer, pleading and begging to take his old father's place; that was all. The father went and the son stayed. They were packed in those trains that were waiting there.
"You saw the women in hundreds, with bundles in their hands beseeching to be permitted to approach the trains, to give their men the last that they had in life between themselves and starvation—a small bundle of clothing to keep them warm on their way to Germany. You saw women approach with a bundle that had been purchased by the sale of the last of their household effects. Not one was allowed to approach to give her man the warm pair of stockings or the warm jacket, so there might be some chance of his reaching there. Off they went!" John H. Gade, in The National Geographic Magazine, May, 1917.
The Belgian women sent a touching appeal to Minister Whitlock:
THE APPEAL OF THE BELGIAN WOMEN.
"Brussels,
"November 18, 1916, 46 Rue de la Madeleine.
"His Excellency Mr. Brand Whitlock,
"Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States of America.
"Mr. Minister:"From the depths of our well of misery our supplication rises to you.
"In addressing ourselves to you, we denounce to your Government, as well as to our sisters, the women of the nation which you represent in our midst, the criminal abuse of force of which our unhappy and defenseless people is a victim.
"Since the beginning of this atrocious war we have looked on impotently and with our hearts torn with every sorrow at terrible events which put our civilization back into the ages of the barbarian hordes.
No shadow of excuse for deportations.
"Mr. Minister, the crime which is now being committed under your eyes, namely, the deportation of thousands of men compelled to work on enemy soil against the interests of their country, can not find any shadow of excuse on the ground of military necessity, for it constitutes a violation by force of a sacred right of human conscience.
"Whatever may be the motive it can not be admitted that citizens may be compelled to work directly or indirectly for the enemy against their brothers who are fighting.
"The Convention of The Hague has consecrated this principle.
"Nevertheless, the occupying power is forcing thousands of men to this monstrous extremity, which is contrary to morals and international law, both these men who have already been taken to Germany and those who to-morrow will undergo the same fate, if from the outside, from neutral Europe and the United States, no help is offered.
The women of Belgium have kept back their tears.
"Oh! The Belgian women have also known how to carry out their duty in the hour of danger; they have not weakened the courage of the soldiers of honor by their tears.
"They have bravely given to their country those whom they loved. * * * The blood of mothers is flowing on the battle-fields.
"Those who are taken away to-day do not go to perform a glorious duty. They are slaves in chains who, in a dark exile, threatened by hunger, prison, death, will be called upon to perform the most odious work—service to the enemy against the fatherland.
"The mothers can not stand by while such an abomination is taking place without making their voices heard in protest.
"They are not thinking of their own sufferings, their own moral torture, the abandonment and the misery in which they are to be placed with their children.
The rights of honor and conscience.
"They address you in the name of the inalterable rights of honor and conscience.
"It has been said that women are 'all powerful suppliants.'
"We have felt authorized by this saying, Mr. Minister, to extend our hands to you and to address to your country a last appeal.
"We trust that in reading these lines you will feel at each word the unhappy heartbeats of the Belgian women and will find in your broad and humane sympathy imperative reasons for intervention.
"Only the united will of the neutral peoples energetically expressed can counterbalance that of the German authorities.
"This assistance which the neutral nations can and, therefore, ought to lend us, will it be refused to the oppressed Belgians?
"Be good enough to accept, Mr. Minister, the homage of our most distinguished consideration."
(Signed by a number of Belgian women and 24 societies.)
The United States Government did not fail to respond to this touching appeal and to others of a similar nature. The American Embassy at Berlin promptly took up the burning question of the deportations with the Chancellor and other representatives of the German Government. In an interview with the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Grew was handed an official statement of the German plans, which is, in translation, as follows:
THE GERMAN MEMORANDUM ON BELGIAN "UNEMPLOYMENT."
More German camouflage.
"Against the unemployed in Belgium, who are a burden to public charity, in order to avoid friction arising therefrom, compulsory measures are to be adopted to make them work so far as they are not voluntarily inclined to work, in accordance with the regulation issued May 15, 1916, by the Governor General. In order to ascertain such persons the assistance of the municipal authorities is required for the district of the Governor General in Brussels, while in the districts outside of the General Government, i.e., in the provinces of Flanders, lists were demanded from the presidents of the local relief committees containing the names of persons receiving relief. For the sake of establishing uniform procedure the competent authorities have, in the meantime, been instructed to make the necessary investigations regarding such persons also in Flanders through the municipal authorities; furthermore, presidents of local relief committees who may be detained for having refused to furnish such lists will be released."
Mr. Grew pointed out that the deportations were a breach of faith and would injure the German cause abroad. In his official summary of the negotiations which he carried on he says:
Mr. Grew points out that Germany excites public opinion against her.
"I then discussed in detail with the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs the unfortunate impression which this decision would make abroad, reminding him that the measures were in principle contrary to the assurances given to the Ambassador by the Chancellor at General Headquarters last spring and dwelling on the effect which the policy might have on England's attitude towards relief work in Belgium. I said I understood that the measures had been promulgated solely by the military government in Belgium and that I thought the matter ought at least to be brought to the Chancellor's personal attention in the light of the consequences which the new policy would entail. Herr Zimmermann intimated in reply that the Foreign Office had very little influence with the military authorities and that it was unlikely that the new policy in Belgium could be revoked. He stated, however, in answer to my inquiry, that he would not disapprove of my seeing the Chancellor about the matter."