Gentlemen: What is happening is known to all these gentlemen. It is the conception and interpretation of Article 52 of The Hague Convention which has created difficulties between you and the German military authority. On which side is the right? It is not for us to discuss that, for we are not competent, and we shall never arrive at an understanding on this point. It will be the business of the diplomatists and the representatives of the various States after the war.
Today it is exclusively the interpretation of German military authority which is valid, and for that reason we intend that all that we shall need for the maintenance of our troops shall be made by the workers of the territory occupied. I can assure you that the German authority will not under any circumstances desist from demanding its rights, even if a town of 15,000 inhabitants should have to perish. The measures introduced up to the present are only a beginning, and every day severe measures will be taken until our object is obtained.
This is the last word, and it is good advice I give you tonight. Return to reason and arrange for the workers to resume work without delay; otherwise you will expose your town, your families, and your persons to the greatest misfortunes.
Today, and perhaps for a long time yet, there is for Halluin neither a prefecture nor a French Government. There is only one will, and that is the will of German authority.
The Commandant of the Town,
SCHRANCK.
(From Massart's "Belgians Under the German Eagle," New York, 1916, pp. 192-3.)
GERMANY'S PROFITS
The German profits from the Rathenau plan were summarized thus frankly by Herr Ganghofer in an article published in the Münchener Neueste Nachrichten Feb. 26, 1915:
For three months about four-fifths of the army's needs were supplied by the conquered country. Even now, although the exhausted sources in the land occupied by us are beginning to yield less abundantly, the conquered territory is still supplying two-thirds of the needs of the German Army in the west. Because of this, for the last four months the German Empire has saved an average of 3,500,000 to 4,000,000 marks a day. This profit which the Germans have secured by their victory is very greatly increased by another means. That is the economic war which, in accordance with the rules of international law, is being carried on against the conquered land by the exhaustion of the goods which belong to the State, which are being carried to Germany from Belgium and Northern France. These are in enormous quantities and consist of war booty, fortress supplies, grain, wool, metal, expensive hardwood, and other things, not including all private property which cannot be requisitioned. In case of necessity this private property will, of course, be secured to increase the German supply, but it will also be paid for at its full value. What Germany saves and gains by this economic war, carried on in a businesslike way, can be reckoned at a further 6,000,000 to 7,000,000 marks a day. Thus the entire profit which the German Empire has made behind its western front since the beginning of the war can be estimated at about 2,000,000,000 marks. For Germany this is a tremendous victory through the sparing and increase in her economic power; for the enemy it is a crushing defeat through the exhaustion of all of the auxiliary financial sources in those portions of his territory which have been lost to us.
Of the branches and management of this economic war I shall have more to say. Then people will learn to banish to the lumber room of the past the catch phrase about "the unpractical German." A German officer of high rank at St. Quentin characterized this happy change which has taken place in our favor in these half-serious, half-humorous words: "It is extraordinary how much a man learns! Although in reality I am an officer of the Potsdam Guard, now I am in the wool and lumber business. And successful, too!"
Governor General von Bissing's testimony on this subject, as recorded in his "Testament," will be found in full in Current History Magazine for February, 1918, pp. 330-38. Among the passages from it quoted in the pamphlet here under review is this:
The advantages which we have been able during the present war to obtain from Belgian industry, by the removal of machinery and so on, are as important as the disadvantages which our enemies have suffered through the lack of their fighting strength.
LANGHORNE'S DISPATCH
That the systematic exploitation and destruction in Flanders and Northern France were still going on in the Fall of 1917 is shown by the following dispatch from the American Chargé d'Affaires in Holland:
The Hague, Sept. 29, 1917.
Secretary of State, Washington: A person who has recently arrived here from Ghent gives the following information as to conditions in East and West Flanders and Northern France:
The looms and machinery are being taken away from the textile mills in Roubaix and Tourcoing and sent to Germany. Such machines as cannot be removed and transported have in some instances been dynamited, and in others are being destroyed with hammers. In the neighborhood of Courtrai in Flanders all the mills have been ordered to furnish a list of their machinery. The measures which have been applied to the north of France will be carried out in Flanders. All textile fabrics have been requisitioned by the military authorities, even in small retail stores, and woolen blankets have been taken from private houses. There is also extensive requisitioning of wine. In the larger cities in the course of the past few weeks large numbers of children of from 10 to 15 years have been brought in for office work. There is a rapid increase in the number of women brought in for this purpose. A marked animation was observed in the Etappen inspection at Ghent last week. It is believed that at the meeting of the inspection something unusual was being discussed.
LANGHORNE,
Charge d' Affaires.