The Project Gutenberg eBook, Belgians Under the German Eagle, by Jean Massart, Translated by Bernard Miall

BELGIANS UNDER THE GERMAN EAGLE

BELGIANS UNDER THE GERMAN EAGLE

BY
JEAN MASSART
Vice-Director of the Class of Sciences in the Royal Academy
of Belgium

TRANSLATED BY
BERNARD MIALL

LONDON
T. FISHER UNWIN LTD.
ADELPHI TERRACE

First published June 1916
(All rights reserved)

PREFACE

These pages were written in Belgium between the 4th August, 1914, and the 15th August, 1915.

I employed in this work only those books and periodicals which entered the country, whether secretly or openly, and which every one, therefore, can procure.

But to drive conviction into the reader's mind I have observed a rule of selection in using these documents: I have used those exclusively which are of German origin, or which are censored by the Germans.

They are—

(A) German posters exposed in Belgium.

(B) Books and newspapers coming from Germany.

(C) Newspapers published in Belgium under the German censorship.

(D) The Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, the only foreign newspaper which has been authorized in Belgium since the beginning of the occupation. As for the Belgian Grey Books, the Reports of the Commission of Inquiry, and books published in Belgium, of these I used only those which were known to us in Belgium before the 15th August, 1915.

In short, since I crossed the frontier I have not inserted a single idea into this book: it therefore precisely reflects the state of mind of a Belgian who has lived a year under the German domination.

I have forced myself to remain as far as possible objective, in order to give my work the scientific rigour which characterizes the Reports of the Belgian Commission of Inquiry. I have simply transferred, to a domain which is new to me, the methods of my customary occupations.

Here is a list of my principal sources, with the abbreviations which denote them in the text:—

The English edition is not a complete translation of the French text. To save space, many facts, and above all, many quotations, have been suppressed.

J. M.

Antibes, Villa Thuret,
October, 1915.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

Bismarck was given to quoting, with approval, a saying which has often been attributed to him, but which was, in reality, first made in his presence by a hero of the American Civil War—General Sheridan. It was, that the people of a country occupied by a conquering army should be left nothing—save eyes to weep with!

And we Belgians, truly, are weeping: weeping for our native country, invaded, in contempt of the most solemn conventions, by one of the signatories of those treaties; weeping for our villages, which are levelled to the ground, and our cities, which are burned; our monuments, which are broken by shell-fire, and our treasures of art and science, which are for ever destroyed. We mourn to think of those hundreds of thousands of our countrymen who have wandered without shelter along the highways of Europe; of Belgium, lately so proud of her prosperity, but now taxed and crushed and exhausted by war requisitions and contributions, and reduced to holding out her hand for public charity.

Who could help but weep when, in Flanders, our soldiers are defending the very last corner of our territory; when, in our villages, men, old folks, women, and children have been, and are yet, shot down without pity in reprisal for imaginary crimes; when thousands of civilians are imprisoned in Germany as hostages; when the burgomaster of the capital, for daring to defend the rights of his constituents, is confined in a Silesian prison;[1] when our rural clergy is decimated, to such a point that divine service has necessarily been suspended in entire cantons; when a scholar like Van Gehuchten dies in exile, after seeing his manuscripts and his drawings, the fruit of ten years' labours, disappear in the flames of Louvain?

Our sobs are mingled with tears of gratitude for the compassionate intervention of Holland, America, Spain, the Scandinavian countries, Switzerland, and Italy ... not forgetting our Allies. It is this generosity that has prevented us from dying of hunger and want; a million of our refugees have found in Holland a fraternal succour which has never for a moment been relaxed; the United States, thanks to the influence and the incomparable activity of their Minister in Brussels, Mr. Brand Whitlock, supply us with our daily bread.

Belgium will never forget the exactions of those who have reduced to famine one of the richest and most fertile countries in the world, nor the unequalled charity of the nations which have enabled us to live to this day, and have saved us from death by starvation.

We are weeping! But we do not surrender ourselves to despair, for we have kept intact our faith in the future, and the firm resolve to leave no stone unturned that we may for ever be spared such another trial. Above all, we refuse to bow our heads beneath the yoke. In vain have the Germans afflicted us with increasingly unjust and unjustifiable and vexatious demands; they will never daunt us. Let them proscribe the Belgian flag as a seditious emblem; we have no need to unfurl it to remain faithful to it; they are welcome to forbid the Te Deum on the day of the King's patron saint; since the King and the Queen are valiantly sharing, on the Yser, in the efforts and the sufferings of our brothers and our sons, royalty has no firmer supporters among us than the leaders of Socialism. No, we assuredly are not ready to abandon ourselves to despair. And nothing can sustain us more than the international sympathies by which we feel ourselves surrounded in this our unmerited misfortune.

The time has not yet come to judge the events which have delivered Europe to fire and blood. Yet we hold that it is the duty of all those who believe themselves in a position usefully to intervene to make themselves heard. For Germany possesses so perfect an organization for the diffusion of her propaganda in foreign countries, that the public opinion of neutral States, hearing but one side of the question, would finally come to believe our enemies.

It would be useless and ineffectual to accumulate, as did the ninety-three German "intellectuals," among others, a number of denials and affirmations, without supporting them by a single definite fact. We do not wish to put forward anything which we cannot immediately support by easily verified proofs. This rule which we have compelled ourselves to observe, has forced us narrowly to limit our field of investigation. We shall speak only of actions and intellectual manifestations which are immediately connected with the present war; and as the field would be too vast even when so circumscribed, we shall say nothing of military operations properly so-called, nor of all that has happened beyond the Belgian frontiers. We do not propose to write a history. We leave to those more competent the task of extricating the truth as to present events; we shall content ourselves with taking indisputable documents, which are nearly always cuttings from German books, or German newspapers, or German posters, and with analysing their mental significance; and, further, with showing how the Belgians react against the actions recorded.

In the following pages we shall first of all examine the violation of Belgian neutrality by Germany, then the infractions of the Hague Convention of 18th October, 1907. We shall be careful to invoke only precise and unquestionable facts; but for that matter the number of German infractions of the law of nations in Belgium is so enormous that we have been able provisionally to exclude all those which are not established in the most positive manner. At the same time we shall endeavour to derive from these facts a few indications as to our enemies' manner of thinking. This last will be studied in further detail in a third chapter: German Mentality Self-depicted.

Intellectual Life in Belgium.

A few words as to the documents utilized.

As the Germans occupied our country they took pains to isolate us from the rest of the world. They immediately suppressed all our journals, as these naturally refused to submit to their censorship. At the same time the Germans forced certain journals to reappear; notably L'Ami de l'Ordre, at Namur, and Le Bien Public, at Gand. The first of these journals took care frankly to inform its readers that the military authorities were forcing it to continue publication.

As for foreign newspapers, their introduction was forbidden under heavy penalties.

Prohibition of Newspapers and Verbal Communications.[2]

Official Notice.

Although the District Commandant[3] is continually causing authentic news of the military operations to be published, the foreign newspapers are intentionally publishing false news.

It is brought to the knowledge of the public that it is therefore strictly forbidden to any one whomsoever to introduce into Spa and the surrounding district newspapers other than German, without the previous authorization of the District Commandant.

Offenders will be punished according to the laws of war.

The same penalties will be applied to those who have verbally spread false news.

The District Commandant,
Aske, Colonel.

Spa, 22nd September, 1914.
(Placard posted at Spa.)

Notice.

I call the attention of the population of Belgium to the fact that the sale and distribution of newspapers and of all news reproduced by letterpress or in any other manner which is not expressly authorized by the German censorship is strictly prohibited. Every offender will be immediately arrested and punished by a long term of imprisonment.

The Governor-General in Belgium,
Baron von der Goltz,
Field-Marshal.

Brussels, 4th November, 1914.
(Posted in Brussels.)

Military Court.

In pursuance of 18, 2 of the Imperial decree of 28th December 1899, the following persons have been punished:—

(a) The coal-merchant Jules Pousseur, of Jambes, with 2 months' imprisonment and a fine of 100 marks, or 20 days' additional imprisonment.

(b) His daughter, Camille Pousseur, with 2 months' imprisonment, because they frequently bought foreign newspapers and articles from newspapers whose sale is prohibited; and further because the daughter copied and collected, with the knowledge and permission of her father, poems and articles hostile to Germany, containing, for the most part, vulgar and obscene insults in respect of the Emperor, the Confederate Princes, and the German Army; and because she further, as one may fully realize from the careful manner in which the numerous copies were made, communicated the originals to others, and finally because Jules Pousseur admits that he has for some time been engaged in forwarding letters, which is forbidden.

The terms of imprisonment will run from the first day of detention. The copies and other writings will be retained.

L'Ami de l'Ordre, 4th April, 1915.

(a) The coal-merchant Jules Pousseur, of Jambes, with 2 months' imprisonment and a fine of 100 marks, or 20 days' additional imprisonment.

(b) His daughter, Camille Pousseur, with 2 months' imprisonment, because they frequently bought foreign newspapers and articles from newspapers whose sale is prohibited; and further because the daughter copied and collected, with the knowledge and permission of her father, poems and articles hostile to Germany, containing, for the most part, vulgar and obscene insults in respect of the Emperor, the Confederate Princes, and the German Army; and because she further, as one may fully realize from the careful manner in which the numerous copies were made, communicated the originals to others, and finally because Jules Pousseur admits that he has for some time been engaged in forwarding letters, which is forbidden.

The German Censorship.

After the 20th August the eastern half of Belgium was thus deprived of all intellectual communication with the outside world. For a fortnight we were left absolutely without news. Then, from the 5th September, the German Government permitted the publication of journals which were carefully expurgated, and falsified by a rigorous censorship:[4] Le Quotidien, Le Bruxellois, L'Écho de Bruxelles, Les Dernières Nouvelles; and later Le Belge, La Belgique, La Patrie, etc., in Brussels, L'Avenir in Antwerp, and many more. Although submitted to the censorship, the appearance of these newspapers was only provisional and uncertain. Le Bien Public reminds its readers of the fact in its issue for the 13th December, 1914. All these journals were on occasion suspended; for example, Le Quotidien, from the 9th to the 11th December, 1914, without any reason being given; L'Ami de l'Ordre, from the 2nd to the 7th September, 1914, for having printed an acrostic regarded as insulting; and Le Bien Public, during the whole of May, 1915.

The illustrated journals were as much subject to the censorship as the ordinary newspapers. Numbers 1 to 3 of 1914 Illustré, published before the arrival of the Germans, could no longer be exposed for sale: No. 1 containing portraits of King Albert, Nicholas II, M. Poincaré, and King George V; No. 2 the portrait of General Leman, and No. 3 that of M. Max. From November onwards the issues were severely edited, so that they contained, for example, scarcely any more photographs of towns burned by the German army. The other illustrated papers—Actualité Illustré, Le Temps Présent, etc., also had none but anodyne photographs, such as portraits of the new masters, military and civil.

In some degree to replace the newspapers, the printers conceived the idea of publishing little booklets relating to the war, but giving no direct news of the military operations. These publications were naturally subjected to the censorship, and many of those which were published before the decree of the 13th October, 1914, were prohibited; it was thus with the very interesting brochure, M. Adolphe Max, bourgmestre de Bruxelles, son administration du 20th août au 26th septembre, 1914, and the Nos. 1 to 10 of the booklets issued by Mr. Brian Hill. Illustrated postcards also were censored; the series in course of publication, representing the ruins of Louvain, Dinant, Charleroi, Liége, etc., had to be interrupted. Music even had to receive the official approbation (see the placard of 27th March, 1915, p. [274]).

In short, it will be seen that our public life already very closely approached the German ideal: Alles ist verboten. To think that Belgium, so justly proud of her constitutional liberties, is now crushed, breathless, under the heavy Prussian jack-boot!

Authorized German Newspapers.

As a compensation for those which the German Administration felt obliged to suppress, it allowed us, about the 10th September, to receive some German newspapers—the Kölnische Zeitung, Kölnische Volkszeitung, Düsseldorfer Tageblatt, Düsseldorfer General-Anzieger, and also a few illustrated papers, notably the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung, Die Wochenschau, Du Kriegs-Echo. At a later date other newspapers were tolerated: Vossissche Zeitung, Berliner Tageblatt, Frankfurter Zeitung, Berliner Zeitung am Mittag, L'Ami du Peuple (a special edition, for Belgium, in French and German, of Der Volksfreund, of Aix-la-Chapelle), and also some new illustrated papers, for example, Kriegsbilder, Zeit im Bild, and above all the Illustrierte Kriegs-Kurier, published in German, Flemish, French, and English,[5] whose sixteen pages, all covered with illustrations, cost only 15 centimes: evidently an instrument of propaganda, subsidized by the Central Administration. We shall have occasion later on to insist on its veracity, if one may call it that. For a long time none of these journals reached us regularly.

We had also access to two journals published by the Government itself: (1) the Deutsche Soldatenpost (Herausgegeben von der Zivil-Vorwaltung des General-Gouverneurs in Belgiën), originally reserved for soldiers, but which was also sold to civilians—in a very intermittent fashion, it is true—from September 1914 to the beginning of December 1914; (2) Le Réveil (Écho de la Presse, Journal officiel du Bureau allemand à Düsseldorf pour la publication de nouvelles authentiques à l'étranger), the latter being published simultaneously in French and German. Forty-nine numbers were published. It felt such an insurmountable disgust for untruth that having announced in the introductory article of its first number that Belgium was entirely in the hands of the Germans, it spoke, in a neighbouring column, of battles in Western Flanders between the Germans and the Allies. Let us say at once that from the point of view of sincerity and liberty of opinion all the newspapers of the Trans-Rhenian world are of equal worth: official or otherwise, they only publish that which is allowed, or rather, inspired, by the Government.

Authorized Dutch Newspapers.

One newspaper not subject to the Imperial censorship, one only, has found grace with the authorities—the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant. Its tendencies, clearly favourable to Germany, enable it to penetrate into Belgium; but not equally all over the country. At Gand one may subscribe to it; but its sale in single numbers is prohibited. In Antwerp it was proscribed for several months from the 7th December.

At Louvain and Brussels it may be sold in the street, and also supplied to subscribers. But it must not be supposed that the paper is anywhere regularly distributed; the edition of the morning of the 10th November, 1914, was forwarded on the 27th November to a few subscribers who were particularly persistent in their demands; it is true that this number contains the article on the letters of prisoners of war made by the Belgians (pp. [104]-[5]), and that these letters annihilate not a few accusations made by the Germans, while they throw a singular light on their lies and acts of pillage. As for the issues for the 6th, 7th, and 8th December, 1914, they were never distributed; an official announcement, which appeared in L'Ami de l'Ordre of the 9th and 10th December states that these numbers contain "inadmissible communications as to the dislocation of troops." The issues of the 24th, 25th, and 26th December were also withheld. Since January 1915 some ten numbers have been prohibited each month.

From the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant we have copied only the articles by contributors and correspondents of the journal itself; it has seemed to us that to reproduce articles extracted from Belgian newspapers was a proceeding which, while quite usual among the Germans, is not entirely honest.

Another Dutch journal, the Algemeen Handelsblad of Amsterdam, arrived in Brussels at the beginning of November; but its licence was withdrawn at the end of a week.

From February 1915 its sale was again authorized in Belgium. At the same time the introduction of a few other Dutch journals was permitted, their pro-German character being indubitable: such were Het Vaterland, De Maasbode, De Nieuwe Courant.

Newspapers introduced surreptitiously.

Let us say at once that despite all prohibitions and all the sentences pronounced, prohibited newspapers continue to trickle into the occupied portion of the country. These newspapers were at first those which were normally appearing in the towns not yet subject to German authority. Thus La Métropole and Le Matin of Antwerp, Le Bien Public and La Flandre Libérale of Gand were very soon carried as contraband and secretly sold in Brussels. Again, in the regions not yet invaded, some of the newspapers of the towns already occupied were printed: thus L'Indépendance Belge of Brussels appeared at Ostend until the arrival of the Germans in that town.

The agents who sold these newspapers had also foreign papers, especially French and English. Later, when all Belgium, save a corner of Flanders, was subjected to the Germans, a number of Belgian papers were printed abroad: La Métropole and L'Indépendance Belge in London and Le XX^e Siècle at Havre.

We also used to receive from time to time occasional newspapers published by Belgian refugees abroad. Of these we may cite: L'Écho Belge, of Amsterdam, La Belgique, of Rotterdam, Les Nouvelles, and Le Courrier de la Meuse, of Maastricht.

It will be understood that prohibited journals are rare. On certain days, when the hunt for the vendors is particularly fruitful, people will offer fifty francs, or even two hundred, for a copy of the Times. As it is chiefly across the Dutch frontier that the smuggling of the English "dailies" is carried on, the authorities have enacted measures which grow more and more Draconian relating to the traffic across this frontier. By the end of 1914 it had become practically impossible to enter Belgium from Holland by the ordinary route (see the Düsseldorfer General-Anzeiger of the 20th December, 1915). The smugglers of journals are therefore obliged to insinuate themselves in secret, and their trade is not without danger; only in the suburbs of Putte (province of Antwerp) the German sentinels killed two of them in December 1914.

Since the spring of 1915 the frontier has been guarded with barbed wire and wires traversed by high-tension electric currents; the crossing has naturally become more difficult. But "difficult" is not "impossible."

Secret Propagation of News.

So that a greater number of readers may profit by the newspapers smuggled into the country, the important passages, especially those relating to military operations, are copied by means of the typewriter. These extracts are searched after as much as the originals, but none the less there are those who continue to prepare and to distribute them in secret. In Brussels alone there are fifteen of these secret sheets, each of which has its public of subscribers; many of them are gratuitous. From time to time our oppressors scent out one of these typewriting establishments, but some other devoted person immediately continues the business.

In certain well-known establishments one could, for a time, obtain the use of a newspaper for ten minutes for one or two francs; but the secret was finally betrayed, thanks to one or other of the innumerable spies supported by the Government.

Secret Newspapers.

Finally, not a few persons, possessing a typewriting machine or other means of reproducing writing, copy and sell clandestinely, for the profit of some charitable undertaking, articles from foreign newspapers or reviews, which bear upon the current political situation. Many documents have reached us in this form.

Lastly, courageous Belgians have undertaken to print, in the midst of the occupied territory, and in spite of all the German prohibitions, newspapers which reach a circulation of many thousands. The two most important are La Libre Belgique and La Vérité. In vain have our persecutors promised the most enticing rewards to those who should denounce the authors of these sheets; they continue imperturbably to appear. Which proves, be it said in passing, that the Germans lie most horribly when they state that numbers of Belgians send them anonymous information.

German Placards.

Our intellectual pasture also includes placards. In the first place, the Notices, Orders, and Proclamations of all kinds. Then the News published by the German Government, placards usually written in three languages, in the principal towns. In Brussels, where they are known as Lustige Blätter, they are particularly numerous. At Louvain, Vilverde, and Mons they are in manuscript, and usually written in German only.

Two important sources of documentation are completely closed: photography and correspondence by post. The taking and reproduction of photographs is strictly prohibited, above all in the towns ruined by the Germans.

Notice.

Whosoever produces, without authorization, representations of destruction caused by the war, or who displays, offers for sale, sells, or otherwise distributes, by means of postcards, illustrated reviews, daily newspapers, or other periodicals containing such representations, above all of buildings or localities burned or devastated by the war, will be punished by a fine not exceeding 5,000 marks or a term of imprisonment not exceeding one year. The seizure of formes and plates which shall have served for the reproduction of these representations, as well as their destruction, may also be ordered.

The Imperial Governor,
Freiherr von Huene,
General of Infantry.

Antwerp, 1st December, 1914.
(Posted at Antwerp.)

Regulations as to Correspondence.

The sending of letters by carrier is prohibited. Until about the middle of December correspondence was carried from town to town by the carriers who undertake the goods traffic since the suspension of the railways; one could still, therefore, easily enough obtain news. But, as a souvenir of his joyous entry, the Herr Baron von Bissing, who succeeded the Herr Baron von der Goltz as Governor-General in Belgium, suppressed this little supplementary vocation of the carriers. Thus Senator Speyer was condemned to pay a fine of 1,000 marks and to undergo 10 days' imprisonment for the conveyance of letters. We have no longer the resource of sending letters by carrier pigeons, as these are closely scrutinized by the Germans. Finally, two remaining methods of transmitting letters were taken from us: the use of a bow and arrow (N.R.C., 1st January, 1915), and enclosure in a loaf baked in Holland and sold in Belgium. So it is needless to say that we have neither telegraph nor telephone.

There is nothing to be done but to go in search of information oneself, after finding out the hours (highly variable) during which one is allowed to "circulate" in the localities through which one has to pass.

Since then it has become very difficult to obtain precise information as to an event which has occurred in another locality, for obviously one cannot trust a missive of this kind to the German post, which accepts only open letters, and passes them through a cabinet noir; moreover, it does not guarantee communication with all points.

By Order of the German Authority.

After 8 p.m. (7 p.m. Belgian) there must be no lights in the windows of the houses of the town of Herve.

The patrol has orders to fire into every window lit up, giving upon the street.

Ad. Cajot, Sheriff.
F. de Francquex, Judge.

(Posted at Herve.)

It must also be explained what administrative formalities one had to fulfil in order to obtain a lodging. Thus, from January 1915 no one could obtain a lodging in Gand, whether in an hotel, or a boarding-house, or apartments, without first obtaining the authorization of the Kommandantur.

Railway Journeys.

Once furnished with a proper passport, one has only to set out. By suitably arranging one's route, one can often take advantage of the local tramways. All other means of communication are extremely precarious. The automobile is forbidden. Horses have been requisitioned by the military authorities.

November 1914.

Official Railway Time-table

of railways at present operating in Belgium under the administration of the German Government. With details of journeys. Price, 0 fr. 10.

General Arrangements.

A certain number of trains have during the last few days been run over the Belgian railways by the German Government.

These are:—

1. Brussels—Aix-la-Chapelle.
2. Brussels—Lille.
3. Brussels—Namur.
4. Brussels—Charleroi.
5. Louvain—Charleroi.
6. Brussels—Antwerp.
7. Brussels—Courtrai.

Owing to the defective state of the lines and the telegraphic and signalling apparatus, these trains can as yet travel only at a moderate pace, and the duration of the journey is not guaranteed. For this reason it is prudent to provide oneself on departure with the necessary provisions for the journey.

1. Brussels—Aix-la-Chapelle.
2. Brussels—Lille.
3. Brussels—Namur.
4. Brussels—Charleroi.
5. Louvain—Charleroi.
6. Brussels—Antwerp.
7. Brussels—Courtrai.

The time-table of the railways is often made up in such a way that the Belgian cannot make use of the trains. Thus the only train leaving Brussels for Mons in November 1914 reached Mons at 9 p.m. But after 9 p.m. it is forbidden to walk through the streets of Mons. The only train leaving Mons for Brussels leaves at 12.14 a.m., but one may not "circulate" in the streets of Mons earlier than 4 a.m.

We see to what extremities the Belgian population is reduced. Well, well!—despite all these difficulties, we have procured documents of great importance. We cannot, unfortunately, publish them all at this juncture; for they would result in the identification of those who conveyed them to us, and expose them to reprisals; and we have learned, to our cost, all that this term signifies according to the ideas of our present rulers.

This work, then, will necessarily be incomplete. We publish it only because we think it useful to demonstrate that in spite of all the annoyances which they receive at the hands of the Germans, the Belgians do not allow themselves to be intimidated. Moreover, whatever may be the provisional lacunæ (mostly intentional) of our documentation, we cannot in any case be reproached with falsification. This, whatever our enemies may think, is a point of capital importance.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Since this was written, M. Max is reported to have been released, and to be living in Switzerland.

[2] These documents are as far as possible translated literally, any inelegancies of diction may probably be attributed to the German authors, whose syntax is often peculiar.—(Trans.)

[3] Commandant de Place.—(Trans.)

[4] We give examples of this censorship later (pp. [256]-[60]).

[5] The English text was soon discontinued.

BELGIANS UNDER THE GERMAN EAGLE

CHAPTER I
THE VIOLATION OF NEUTRALITY

A.—The Preliminaries.

We were too confiding.

With the exception of the military and a few statesmen, the Belgians were convinced that nations, just as individuals, were bound by their engagements, and that as long as we remained faithful to our international obligations, the signatories of the Treaty of London (19th April, 1839), which set forth the conditions of the neutrality, or rather of the neutralization, of Belgium (Belg. All., p. 3), would equally observe their obligations towards us.

However, in 1911, during the "Agadir crisis," our calm was a little shaken by a series of articles in Le Soir. According to this journal, all the German military writers held the invasion of Belgium to be inevitable in the event of a war between France and Germany.

The Belgians' Distrust of Germany lulled.

But our faith in international conventions—just a trifle ingenuous, it may be—very soon regained its comforting influence. Had not Wilhelm II, "the Emperor of Peace," assured the Belgian mission, which was sent to greet him at Aix-la-Chapelle, that Belgium had nothing to fear on the part of Germany (see L'Étoile Belge, 19th October, 1911). In September 1912 the Emperor made a fresh reassuring statement. Being present at the Swiss manœuvres, he congratulated M. Forster, President of the Swiss Confederation, and told him how glad he was to find that the Swiss Army would effectually defend the integrity of her frontier against a French attack. "What a pity," he added, "that the Belgian Army is not as well prepared, and is incapable of resisting French aggression." This evidently meant that Belgium ran no risk from the side of Prussia.

It was not only the Emperor who assured us of his profound respect for international statutes. The German Ministers made similar declarations in the Reichstag (Belg. All., p. 7).

In Belgium itself the Germans profited by every occasion to celebrate their friendship for us and their respect for treaties. In 1905, at the time of the seventy-fifth anniversary of Belgian independence, Herr Graf von Wallwitz stated at an official reception: "And as for us Germans, the maintenance of the treaty of warranty concluded at the birth of modern Belgium is a sort of political axiom which, to our thinking, no one could violate without committing the gravest of faults" (see p. 185 of the Annales parlementaires belges, Senate, 1906).

In 1913, at the time of the joyous entry of the King and Queen into Liége, General von Emmich, the same who was entrusted with the bombardment of the city in August 1914, came to salute our sovereigns in the name of the Emperor. He spoke incessantly of the German sympathies for the Belgians and their country.

In August 1913 Herr Erzberger gave his word of honour, as Catholic deputy to the Reichstag, that there had never been any question of invading Belgium, and that Belgium might always count on the party of the Centre to cause international engagements to be respected. This is the very party that is now heaping up manifest falsehoods in order to justify the aggression of Germany.

German Duplicity on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd of August, 1914.

Let us consider the days immediately preceding the war. The German newspapers were announcing that the troops occupying, at normal times, the camps near the Belgian frontiers had been directed upon Alsace and Lorraine; and these articles, reproduced in Belgium, had succeeded in finally lulling our suspicions.

In the currents of thought which were then clashing in Belgium, it was confidence that carried the day. Many of us who were present on the 1st of August at a session of the Royal Academy of Belgium, were speaking, before the session was opened, of the serious events which were approaching, the war already declared between Austria and Serbia, and the conflict which appeared imminent between Germany, France, Russia, and England. Yet no one imagined that Belgium could be drawn into the conflagration. That very morning, it was related, France had officially renewed, through her Minister in Brussels, the assurance that she would faithfully abstain from violating the neutrality of Belgium (1st Grey Book, No. 15); and there was no reason to doubt his words. A few days earlier the German Minister in Brussels had affirmed that his country had too much respect for international conventions to permit herself to transgress them; and we believed him too! Oh, simplicity! We still believed him, on the following day, when he repeated the same declaration (1st Grey Book, No. 19; Belg. All., p. 7). And on the evening of that Sunday, the 2nd of August, he presented to our Government the ultimatum of Germany (1st Grey Book, No. 20).

The Ultimatum.

The telegram of the 2nd of August, by which Herr von Jagow sent the ultimatum to the German Minister in Brussels, declared: "Please forward this Note to the Belgian Government, in a strictly official communication, at eight o'clock this evening, and demand therefrom a definite reply in the course of twelve hours, that is, at eight o'clock to-morrow morning" (Lüttich, p. 4). Never, since Belgium's birth, had a problem so breathless been placed before her Government. And Germany left her twelve hours to solve it: twelve hours of the night! She was not willing that our Government should have time to reflect at leisure; she hoped that in a crisis of distraction Belgium, taken at a disadvantage and forgetful of her dignity, would accept the inacceptable.

However, the German Minister in Brussels continued to offer us explanations which were as perfidious as they were confused and obscure, and to assure us up to the last of the friendly intentions of his Government. The Germany fashioned by Bismarck has assuredly nothing about it to remind us of the Germany of Goethe and Fichte. We might have guessed as much, for that matter, when we saw the Germans glorifying the man who boasted of having falsified the famous Ems telegram in order to make the war of 1870 inevitable, and who succeeded in making his countrymen accept, as a guiding principle, that "might comes before right."

The Speech of the Chancellor in the Reichstag.

However, we may suppose that some slight scruples lingered in the recesses of the German conscience, since on the very day when the Chancellor of the Empire told the British Ambassador in Berlin that an international convention is merely "a scrap of paper,"[6] and that neutrality is only a word, he recognized, in his speech to the Reichstag, that the invasion of Belgium constituted an injustice; but he immediately excused this violation of the law of nations by strategic necessities.

B.—Justification of the Entry into Belgium.

"Strategic necessities!" said the German Chancellor. These necessities are expounded in the ultimatum, and may be summed up thus: "Germany knows that France is preparing to attack her through Belgium."

The first question which occurs to us is: Was France really preparing to cross our territory, and had she massed troops near our frontier? There is assuredly no one outside Germany who would admit this. Indeed, if important bodies of troops had been massed in the north of France they could effectually have opposed the advance of the Germans through Belgium. Now in all the battles which the French fought in our country their numbers were much too small to resist the Germans. Let us also remark that these attempts on the part of the French were made on the 15th August at Dinant, the 19th August at Perwez, and the 23rd August at Semois. How then can any one believe that the French were massed close to our frontier as early as 3rd August? Moreover, the map published in the N.R.C. of the 16th December, 1914, confirms the untruthfulness of the German allegations.

This "strategic reason" was again invoked by the Chancellor of the Empire on the 4th August. But owing to the irrefutable manner in which the tardiness of the French movements disproved this assertion the latter is no longer uttered, save in an evasive manner. The German no longer says: "France was ready to cross into Belgium," but "France would not have failed to enter Belgium, and we simply outstripped her." It is thus that Count Bernstoff, the German ambassador to Washington, expressed himself in the interview published by L'Indépendant in September 1914, while the same assertion is found in the manifesto of the ninety-three German "Intellectuals" and the letter addressed by Herr Max Bewer to M. Maeterlinck (in the D.G.A. of October 1914 and the Soldatenpost of the 14th October, 1914).

Let us now ask if Germany had such suspicions of France as amounted to a semi-certitude? In other words, was she sincere in declaring that she knew that France was on the point of invading Belgium? We do not hesitate to assert that she was lying: for if she had really believed that France was ready to violate our neutrality it would have been enormously to her advantage to wait until the violation was committed. For Belgium has always asserted that in case of war between France and Germany she would resist by arms the first invader and immediately join herself to the other Power. Now Germany, however profound her political perversity may be, had no reason to suspect the sincerity of Belgium; she knew then—and this time she did know—that by allowing the French to enter our country she would assure herself of the assistance of our army against her enemy. And scanty as was her esteem for the Belgian soldiers—perhaps she has since had occasion to change her mind!—it was none the less obviously to her interest to avoid having them as her adversaries.

For the rest, we may boldly assert that the very terms of the German ultimatum prove, without possible doubt, that she did not believe in the danger of a French irruption into Belgium. For if she had entertained this conviction she would have said to Belgium: "I warn you that if you do not take the necessary measures to resist the entrance of the French I shall be fully authorized to invade your territory in my turn, in order to defend myself." In acting thus she would have had the right on her side ... and the German diplomatists of the day are certainly capable of distinguishing justice from injustice in cases where the distinction is so easy.

We say, therefore, that the imminence of a French attack upon Belgium was only a pretext and a bugbear; a pretext to justify the violation of Belgium in the eyes of other nations; a bugbear to catch votes of credit in the Reichstag without previous discussion. "We were not able to wait for this session before commencing hostilities and invading Luxemburg, perhaps even Belgium," declared the Chancellor. Observe how clumsy is this "perhaps"; the German troops entered Belgium on the night of the 3rd of August (1st Grey Book, No. 35), and on the afternoon of the 4th, at the session of the Reichstag, the Chancellor had no knowledge of it! We thought the official telegraph service worked better than that in Germany!

What, then, were the real reasons for invading our country? They were strategic reasons, it is true, but not those which the Chancellor indicated in his speech! They had been known for a long time; the German staff had always regarded a sudden attack upon France as an unavoidable necessity, and for that it was necessary at all costs to cross Belgium. Moreover, on the very day when the Chancellor was still invoking the French preparations in the Reichstag, the Secretary of State, von Jagow, openly avowed the true motive for violating Belgium. The pamphlet of propaganda, Die Wahrheit über den Krieg, after invoking, without insisting on, the danger of a French attack, described at length the German plan of campaign; a sudden attack upon France, delivered by passing through Belgium; then, immediately after victory, a change of front, and the crushing of the Russian Army. The same idea is expounded in an infinity of articles and pamphlets.

There can, therefore, be no remaining doubt as to the determining motives of Germany: she wished to pass through Belgium in order to fall upon France before the latter was ready. Germany had been preparing for war for several days, for she knew that she had made the war inevitable, while France, deceived by her adversary's peaceful professions of faith, and, moreover, anxious to preserve the peace, which she still believed to be possible, had hardly commenced her mobilization. Let us recall the comparison drawn by Mr. Lloyd George in his speech at the City Temple on the 11th November, 1914. "Imagine," he said, "that your right-hand neighbour came and made you the following proposal: 'See, my friend, I've got to cut the throat of your left-hand neighbour. Only as his door is barred I can't catch him unawares, and so I shall lose my advantage over him. So you will do me a little service; nothing that isn't entirely reasonable, as you will see. You will just let me come through your garden; if I trample down your borders a little I'll have them raked and put in good order again; and if by ill-luck I damage or kill one of your children I promise you a nice little indemnity.'"

And it is because we would not help Germany in this task that she has spattered us with insults. The Germans cannot understand how we could have rejected her "well-intentioned" proposal, as the Emperor calls it in his declaration of war. Evidently they have ideas of honour which differ from ours. We can regard this proposal only as an insult to the Belgian people.

C.—German Accusations against Belgium.

There is one circumstance which aggravates the evil deed which has soiled the German name. It is the insistence with which the Press and the politicians of Germany seek to cast the blame on Belgium herself. For if we are to believe them it was Belgium who began.

Necessity of influencing Neutrals.

When the German rulers discovered, to their utter stupefaction, real or feigned, that America and the other neutral States did not benevolently accept the strategical excuse for the violation of Belgian neutrality, their attitude underwent a sudden modification. Since the whole world, in a spontaneous impulse of indignation, branded the conduct of Germany, the traitor and perjurer, in assailing a nation which she was actually under an obligation to protect, the German Government adopted the classic procedure of evildoers, which consists in reversing the rôles, and posing as an innocent victim, driven into a corner by an adversary who does not abide by legitimate methods of defence. What was to be done in such a case? The German Government must seem to believe, and then claim to have proved, that Belgium had already violated her own neutrality before the German invasion; for then Germany could no longer be blamed for her attitude.

Absurdity of the first Accusations.

Immediately the German newspapers invented stories of French troops disentraining in Belgium from the 30th July, 1914, and of French officers teaching us how to handle Krupp guns!—of French airmen flying over Belgium, of French and Belgian soldiers attacking the Landwehr at Aix-la-Chapelle on the 2nd August, 1914. These pitiful accusations were demolished by M. Waxweiler in La Belge Neutre et Loyale. We will content ourselves with remarking that all these infractions of neutrality are anterior to the 4th of August. If they had really been committed the innumerable spies scattered about Belgium would have warned the German Minister in Brussels, who would have telegraphed to the Chancellor, and the latter would have taken good care to make them the basis of a serious complaint against Belgium in his speech to the Reichstag. What weight would not these revelations have lent to his arguments? If he did not do thus it was because he was not informed, and if he was not informed it was because the facts were non-existent. They were invented—very clumsily, moreover—after the event.

If now we cast a glance at the tales which the Germans have imagined to extenuate their crime against justice, we shall say, with a certain professor of Utrecht (K.Z., 4th November, first morning edition), that one might with difficulty have pardoned the German rulers for violating Belgian neutrality if it had been proved that imperious strategic necessities compelled them to it, but that they should have stuck to their original declarations, "for," he adds, "we have been painfully impressed by all the offences which have been alleged after the event to demonstrate that Germany had the right to act as she did."

To insult and calumniate an innocent person in order to excuse oneself is an attitude little worthy of a self-respecting nation.

A Change of Tactics. The Revelations of the N.A.Z.

Week by week the German journals add an item to the indictment of Belgium. One would say that their method of reasoning must be as follows: "Since we cannot bring forward a single convincing proof, let us accumulate as many as possible of any degree of value; we shall end by crushing Belgium with the weight of evidence." In order that we might judge of the efficacy of this procedure, Germany ought, of course, to tell us how many bad arguments are to her thinking worth one good one.

Yet it was extremely important that Germany should be able to bring forward proof of the crime of Belgium; for directly the neutrals, and in particular America, began to doubt our political honesty they would withdraw their sympathies and leave our executioners full liberty of action. At the same time Germany would be able to pretend that she knew of Belgium's intrigues, and that by invading our territory in spite of treaties she was not, properly speaking, committing a treacherous act.

There are reasons for supposing that Germany herself was conscious of the insufficiency of these accusations. Hence the change of tactics which we observe after the month of October 1914.

The Government itself entered into the lists. In its official organ, the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, it commented upon the documents discovered in the Ministries of Brussels.

To judge of the relevance of this collection of documents we must keep in mind the two following points: (1) That England played the part of protector of Belgian neutrality; (2) the probability of a German invasion in case of war between France and Germany. Let us rapidly examine these.

1. England as the Guarantor of Belgian Neutrality.—Every one knows that for centuries England has been interested, more than any other nation, in ensuring that Belgium should not be annexed either to France or to Prussia.

As far back as 1677, says Sorel (L'Europe et la Révolution française, vol. i. p. 338), a French agent in London wrote to Louvois: "It has been voted unanimously by the Lower Chamber that the English will sell their very shirts (this is the phrase they use) to make war on France for the preservation of the Low Countries." During the French Revolution, and later, under the Empire, the struggle between England and France was largely provoked by the desire to turn France out of Belgium.

The Treaty of London (1839) makes no distinction between the five guarantors of our neutrality: Austria, France, Great Britain, Prussia, and Russia; but it is none the less unanimously admitted that England has the most immediate interest in the preservation of our independence, as it matters greatly to England that Antwerp—that loaded pistol aimed at the heart of England, as Napoleon used to say—should become neither French nor German.

Therefore, as soon as Belgium was threatened by an armed invasion, the traditional policy of England was at once invoked.

It was in virtue of this policy that Great Britain, in 1870, demanded of France and Germany whether they engaged themselves to maintain the neutrality of Belgium. The two belligerents gave and kept their promise. France, driven up against the Belgium frontier at Sedan, did not even then consider that she had the right to break her word; she preferred to allow herself to be crushed. If ever there were "strategic reasons" which would excuse the breaking of a promise, it was then!

All this being so, no one was surprised when in August 1914 the newspapers announced that England had put the usual question to France and Germany. This time again France made the reply inspired by her sense of honour; Germany refused to commit herself.

The historical facts which we have recalled suffice to show that the protective rôle of England was not invented for the needs of the moment, as Germany would have the world believe. The Chancellor cannot be ignorant of these facts; they are known to all. Why then does he persist in asserting that England would not have intervened had France been the country to violate our neutrality?

2. The danger of a German Invasion.—For several years German generals have been agreed in admitting the necessity of marching the German army across Belgium in case of war with France.[7] In military circles this was a secret de polichinelle, as the N.R.C. remarked on the 22nd December, 1914 (evening edition).

Moreover, the Germans themselves held that the Belgians could not have been ignorant of the threat of a German invasion; this idea is expounded, notably, in a booklet of official aspect, entitled La part de la culpabilité de l'Angleterre dans la guerre mondiale.

Belgium therefore had serious reasons for expecting a German attack. There was evidently only one thing for her to do: to demand assistance of the country which had constituted itself the protector of her neutrality, and on which she had always been accustomed to rely with unshakable confidence.

1. The Report of M. le Baron Greindl, sometime Belgian Minister in Berlin.

Falsification of the Greindl Report.

On the 14th October, 1914, the German Government posted on the walls of Brussels a placard entitled: England and Belgium (Documents found at the headquarters of the Belgian Staff). A reproduction of this placard was distributed gratuitously, thousands of copies being issued the same day. This document contains, first, a rapid summary of a report on the relations which existed in 1906 between the Belgian Chief of Staff and the British military attaché. Then the placard reproduces, "word for word," a portion of a report made by M. Greindl, dated the 23rd December, 1911. In this report M. Greindl warns the Belgian Government of the possibility of a French attack.

Whosoever will attentively read the exhibited portion of this report will at once remark that its phrases lack connection and logical sequence. Thus, there is certainly a hiatus between the opening phrases and those that begin with: "When it became evident that we should not allow ourselves to be alarmed by the pretended danger of closing the Scheldt, the plan was not abandoned, but modified, in the sense that the English army of assistance would not be disembarked on the Belgian coast, but in the nearer French ports." Now what is meant by this "pretended danger"? Pretended by whom? And then "we should not allow ourselves to be alarmed." Who is "we?" Remark that a few lines farther on the report speaks of the eventuality of a battle between the Belgian army and the British army; Belgium, which was just now the ally of the British, is now their adversary, although nothing indicates how she passed from the first attitude to the second. In the same sentence the closing of the Scheldt is spoken of with an English landing on the Belgian coast; yet we cannot imagine M. Greindl placing Antwerp on the Belgian coast. Can we doubt after this that phrases have been suppressed in this portion of the document? Evidently not; for it is radically impossible to realize the bearing and the meaning of the report by reading the portion published. What, then, is the conclusion forced upon us? It is that the German Government has "cooked" the text; omitting to copy certain passages which would not tally with the deductions which it wished to draw from it, and that it has perhaps even twisted the meaning of certain phrases.

The publication of the complete report was demanded by the Belgian Government (see K.Z., 24th October, first morning edition). But Germany refused; the report was too long, it replied, by the medium of the N.A.Z. (25th November, 1914). All that could be obtained was the publication in facsimile, in the same issue of the N.A.Z., of the heading and the two first lines. Since the German Government did not publish the rest, we have the right to conclude that this was because it had subjected the document to falsifications such as were introduced in that we are now about to consider. In any case, the report as it was published means nothing. One feels that it was intentionally made confusing. By whom?

2. The Reports of Generals Ducarne and Jungbluth.

The falsifications inserted in these documents by the German diplomatists have already been lucidly exposed (for example, by E. Brunets, Calomnies Allemandes); so there would be no need to return to the subject, had not the German Government thought fit to attempt to use these documents in order to demoralize the Belgians.

At the end of December 1914, and in January 1915, Germany distributed hundreds of thousands of copies of a pamphlet containing several documents, among which were translations (into Flemish and French) and facsimiles of the Ducarne and Jungbluth reports. The famous words of the "reference" are replaced in their natural position in the middle of the fourth paragraph,[8] but—and this was a wholly unexpected discovery—they were also found in the commentary. According to the copy in the text, one reads: "The document bears on the margin: 'The entrance of the English into Belgium would take place only after the violation of our neutrality by Germany.'"

Disconcerting fecundity of Kultur! The Germans have reason to be proud of their chemical industry. Thanks to a special fertilizer prepared in the offices of Wilhelmstrasse, the famous phrase, which occurs only once in the original document, is promptly multiplied and is able to appear twice over.

The Attitude of the Belgians toward the German Falsifications.

Note that to give more weight to their explanations the Germans were careful to have them printed in Flemish and in French, on the paper and with the type habitually employed by the Moniteur belge. It is then, in the last resort, the Belgian public which has paid the cost of printing this falsification of a public document. Well, well! they have mistaken our psychology, for despite these "revelations" our conviction is unshaken. Not a Belgian has criticized the actions of his Government in respect of the defensive agreement with England. It would be like blaming a man whose house was destroyed by fire for having insured it with a reliable insurance company.

Confronted by the failure of their endeavours to discourage the Belgians and to embroil them with their legitimate Government, Germany returned to the charge. A placard dated 10th March, 1915, posted in Brussels, stated that the Belgian statesmen replied to the publication of the Ducarne and Jungbluth reports only after the lapse of three months. The placard evidently alludes to the Belgian Note of the 13th January, 1915 (see the 2nd Grey Book, No. 101). Now the first sentence of this Note states that the Belgians had already replied on the 4th December, 1914. Germany could not have been unaware of this reply; let us add that we ourselves knew of it on the 10th December, thanks to the issue for the 7th of L'Indépendance Belge (appearing in London), which was smuggled into Brussels.

The third document contained in the pamphlet of the German Government related to the military geographical manuals.[9] It shows that a final collaboration (after the violation of her engagements by Germany) was carefully devised by the British and Belgian staffs. Truly it ill becomes the Germans, so proud of the introduction of their scientific method into the art of war, which leaves nothing unthought of, to reproach others for acting in the same way, and for making meticulous preparations at an opportune time! In two places the article insists on the fact that the preparations of these manuals was effected in "time of peace." But come! should the Belgians and the British have waited until the Germans were in Belgium before thinking of measures of defence?

Finally, the pamphlet contains Fresh and Serious Proofs demonstrating the complicity of Belgium and England. Documents were found on the escritoire of the British Legation in Brussels relating to the Belgian mobilization, the defence of Antwerp, and the French mobilization. The accusation is this: these documents were found in the British Legation, a proof that the Belgian Government had no military secrets from the British Government, and that they had a close military understanding.

Once again: was Belgium, aware of the Germanic peril, to deliver herself bound hand and foot to the invader, who, not content with forgetting his international obligations, was about to run precisely counter to them? It would evidently have been more agreeable to Germany to have found in Belgium a lamb all ready to allow itself to be sacrificed on the altar of Kultur. Unhappily for Kultur, Belgium behaved like an enraged ram, determined to sell its life dearly.

Whatever aspect of the question of Belgian neutrality we may consider, we always come back to this fact: Germany violated this neutrality on the 4th August, although Belgium had given her no plausible excuse for doing so. Since then the Germans have undertaken a campaign for the purpose of justifying their "injustice," as their Chancellor termed it. But none of the accusations invented after the event can in the slightest degree extenuate this injustice; their only effect has been to render still more execrable the treachery of the perjured protector.

Neutral Opinion.

It is pleasant, in this connection, to cite here the opinion of four writers belonging to countries which have not taken part in the war.

A Dutch writer published in De Amsterdammer an interesting article which was translated into French, but of which the sale in Belgium was immediately prohibited by the Germans.

In a lecture which has achieved a very great celebrity, Herr Karl Spitteler, a well-known literary man of German-speaking Switzerland, also took the part of Belgium. We know of this lecture only by the slashing which it received in the K.Z. on the 30th December, in the first morning edition.

Here is a passage which particularly infuriated the German paper:—

"I consider that to take the documents from the pockets of the gasping victim (Belgium) is, as to the spirit which inspired the act, a gross fault of taste. It would have been quite enough to throttle the victim; to blacken him afterwards is too much. As for Switzerland, if it associated itself with these calumnies against Belgium, it would commit not merely an infamy, but a mistake; for on the day when another Power grudges us our national existence, the same accusations might be employed against us: do not let us forget that malice is now counted among the munitions of war."

Another Swiss writer, M. Philippe Godet, expresses his opinions with no less energy in the Journal de Genève (8th September, 1914).

The Falsification of M. de l'Escaille's Letter.

In the preceding pages we have dealt only with matters relating to Belgium. Do not let our attitude be misunderstood. We have not the presumption to suppose that Belgium has ever occupied the foreground in the negotiations described; on the contrary, we are perfectly well aware of the diplomatic insignificance of our country in the discordant "Concert of Europe" which has ended in the present war. Our sole object is to show that Belgium has not played the unavowable rôle which the Germans attributed to her. As to the origin of this war, and the responsibility which the German rulers seek to foist upon Great Britain, in order that their own country, and, above all, their ally, Austria, may evade it, this is a discussion into which we do not wish to enter, for it lies outside the programme which we have set ourselves. We ought, however, to speak a word as to the placards which the German authorities had posted up in Belgium during the month of September 1914. The first is dated the 16th September; it gives the résumé of a letter written by M. B. de l'Escaille to the Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Ten days later a new placard appeared: this time the complete text of the letter was given, and it was explained how it came to fall into the hands of the Germans.

Let us leave this last point: it concerns the criminal law, not diplomacy. Let us examine only the summary which was published and the conclusions which the Germans drew from it.

Was the summary honest? To discover this let us take the essential sentence, printed in heavier type: "They possess even the definite assurance that England will come to the assistance of France"; and let us compare this with the corresponding passage of the text: "To-day they are strongly convinced in St. Petersburg, they even have the assurance, that England will support France." The term "assistance" (secouer) in the summary can apply only to military assistance, while the text speaks only of "support" (soutien), which means diplomatic action. So the second conclusion also is false—"that England did not intervene in the war on account of Belgium, but because she had promised France to give her assistance."

Let us now look at the first conclusion. It is "that Germany was actuated by pacific intentions, and sought by all means to avoid war." In reality the text, like the summary, states only that Germany sought to avoid a general conflict, which means that she wished to localize the war between Austria and Serbia; in other words, Germany wished Europe to give Austria a free hand to crush Serbia. Nowhere does the text say that Germany did anything to avoid "the war": the only war which was declared on the 30th July, that of Austria against Serbia. In short, this conclusion is falsified.

There remains the phrase which introduces the two conclusions: "By this report of the diplomatic representative of Belgium at the Court of St. Petersburg it is proved".... Was M. de l'Escaille really the diplomatic representative of Belgium in St. Petersburg? Open an administrative almanack, and you will see that the representative was M. le Comte Conrad de Buisseret-Steenbecque de Blarenghien. As for M. de l'Escaille, he was Secretary of Legation.

The conclusions concluding here, there is no room for further falsifications.

It is not our intention to make an exhaustive examination of the diplomatic documents relating to the war; the more so as this examination has been conducted in masterly fashion by MM. Dürckheim and Denis, by M. Waxweiler, and by the author of J'Accuse. It is enough for us to prove that Germany has intentionally falsified documents, since this simple proof disposes of all her attempts to befoul Belgium; for he who has a good argument at his disposal is not so foolish as to spoil it and deprive it of all real value by means of falsifications.

D.—The Declaration of War and the first Hostilities.

The three Successive Proposals of Wilhelm II to Belgium.

Under its dry, cold, diplomatic phrasing the reply to the ultimatum (1st Grey Book, No. 22) scarcely conceals the indignation which thrilled the heart of Belgium when Wilhelm II offered her the chance of associating herself with his crime against loyalty. But the German Government did not understand this indignation, neither was it conscious of its own infamy. Otherwise how could it have repeated the same offer a few days later—an offer at once contemptible and full of contempt, as was so well said by M. Jules Destrée before the meeting of the Federation of Advocates, on the 3rd August, 1914. Two remarks on the subject of this fresh proposal (1st Grey Book, No. 60). In the first place the United States Minister in Belgium, who was entrusted with the German interests, refused to transmit it; as for the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs, he accepted the mission "without enthusiasm." In the second place, when the Emperor affirmed, on the 9th August, that the fortress of Liége had been taken by assault, he must have known that the fortress was still resisting; for although the city of Liége was occupied by the Germans from the 7th, the forts were intact. Let us remember that the first fort which fell was that of Barchon, on the 8th August, 1914; that of Évegnée fell on the 11th, that of Fléron on the 14th, that of Loncin, commanded by General Leman, fell only at 5 p.m. on the 15th: and several forts were at that time still holding out.

German diplomacy naturally received a fresh indignant refusal (1st Grey Book, No. 23).

Even then official Germany, dazzled by the brilliance of its Kultur, had not yet grasped the full baseness of its crime, since on the 10th September it posted up in Brussels its new proposal and Belgium's reply.

Could candour in perfidy go any farther? Yes! for the German Government, during the siege of Antwerp, made proposals of peace for the third time. This offer was secret. The terms have not been published; even the Germanic Press sought to deny that it had been made; but the avowal appeared in a Viennese newspaper, the Neue Freie Presse, and was reproduced by order of the German authorities in La Belgique (Brussels, 13th January, 1915).

Hostilities preceding the Declaration of War.

So the Emperor Wilhelm II did not succeed in making us his accomplices. Needless to say, we did not tremble before the two bogies which are given so large a place in his harangues: his store of dry powder and his newly-whetted sabre.

And so the sovereign of the formidable German Empire declared war upon tiny Belgium. "He would find himself, to his keenest regret, obliged to execute, if need be by force of arms, the measures of security set forth as indispensable," as the declaration of war expressed it (1st Grey Book, No. 27). This declaration reached Brussels at 7 a.m. on the 4th of August. But, apparently unknown to the Emperor, the German troops, before the telegram had reached Belgium, had crossed the frontier during the night of the 3rd.

We have just seen that the declaration of war reached Brussels on the 4th August, at seven o'clock in the morning. This, at least, is what we learn from the official documents published by Belgium. What does official Germany say upon this point? Nothing. Nowhere is any mention made of the declaration of war, and it is this intentional vagueness which allows the Germans to declare, without blushing, that the German troops entered Belgium on the night of the 3rd August. They let it be supposed that the state of war existed from the moment when Belgium, on the 3rd, refused the German ultimatum. Thus the Chronik des Deutschen Krieges (p. 33) gives the text of the ultimatum; then, in two lines, a summary of the reply. The first document which follows relating to Belgium is the proclamation of the Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the Meuse (6th Report, I).

This is very vague as to the political relations between the two countries: are they at war, or are they not? No one could say. Of the declaration of war, which should have found a place here, not a word; there is no further question of Belgium before the telegrams of the 7th August (p. [84]).

When we say that the declaration of war is not mentioned in any German publication, we are going too far. Die Wahrheit über den Krieg ("die Wahrheit!") speaks of the declaration of war; but only to say that Belgium declared war (p. 40): Belgiën antwortete darauf mit der Kriegserklärung.[10]

The same publication appends some documents; No. 41 (p. 160) is a reproduction of the ultimatum. One would naturally expect that No. 42 would be either Belgium's reply or the declaration of war. By no means; these two documents are not given. Any one who reads the text and hopes thereby to learn "die Wahrheit" concerning the war will be no better informed by the documents. Let us in passing remark that the German Government, in the White Book published for the session of the Reichstag of the 4th August, had also, by its own admission, made a selection among the documents which it submitted to the members of Parliament. This procedure is no doubt a logical consequence of Kultur.

The Pacific Character of Belgium.

Nearly all the nations of Europe cherish national animosities, racial hatreds handed down from century to century, the heritage of conflicts never pacified, which a mere nothing suffices to renew; or the survival of oppressions and spoliations suffered of old by men's forbears, whose abhorred memory is transmitted like a sacred trust from generation to generation. And in all these countries, moreover, there is a chauvinist, a jingo party, which urges a "war of revenge against the hereditary enemy." In Belgium, as Mr. Asquith stated in his speech in Dublin, there was nothing of the kind. We had no spite against any one, and our people, laborious and peaceful, only asked to be allowed to live in friendship with its neighbours. Never had there been in Belgium any manifestation against a foreign country; never had a political party inscribed in its programme any sort of hostility towards another people. Who, then, will be persuaded that "the Belgian Government had for a long time been carefully preparing for this war,"[11] as the Emperor Wilhelm II asserted in his telegram to the President of the United States (in which he also stated that his heart was bleeding!)? No, there is no possible doubt on this point: Belgium brought into the conflict no racial enmity,[12] and if she has found herself thrown into the furnace, despite her constant love of peace, it is solely because her haughty neighbour confronted her with this dilemma: either peace with dishonour, or honour with war. The choice was not in doubt.

German Espionage in Belgium.

It is idle to insist on the accusation of premeditation, for it is unhappily too certain that Belgium was is no way ready for war. But it is also incontestable that Germany had "for a long time carefully prepared for" the invasion of Belgium. We cannot as yet reveal in detail the facts as to German espionage, with its often odious methods, for in most cases these revelations would expose those who have informed us to reprisals. We must for the present be intentionally vague, reserving preciser details for a later date.

When the occupation comes to an end we shall report in detail the case of a German engineer, who, in returning to us with the rank of officer, presided over the systematic destruction by fire of the workshop which he had managed; and the case of another engineer, who commanded the gang ordered to set fire to the quarter adjoining the factory in which he had been employed. Thanks to his knowledge of the locality, he was able in a few seconds to set fire to the richest streets of the neighbourhood. We shall be able to mark on a map the foundations of reinforced concrete for the great German guns, constructed long in advance, in the localities most favourable to bombardment; we shall also point to the store of timber intended to serve for the construction of a bridge over the Scheldt, which was found in a factory established by Germans on the banks of the river. As for the store of Mauser rifles discovered at Liége, our newspapers spoke of that at the time.

Here is a fact which can be related without danger. A German officer dropped from his pocket—we shall state later on in what locality—a detailed plan of the town of Soignies, in which his troops had lodged a few days earlier. This plan gives, besides the details of streets, and even houses, information concerning the occupants of certain buildings: pharmacies, breweries, tanneries, the Communal treasury, the bank, and other establishments where the army might need to make requisitions. The large buildings are coloured blue. It was there that the troops were lodged. This plan, drawn in Chinese ink and coloured, dates from fifteen years back according to the indications which it contains. But it has quite recently been revised and completed, for the latest alterations in the town have been added in pencil; improvement of the Senne, creation of a public square, etc.

The case related by the N.R.C. of 19th August (evening) is particularly instructive. When the Germans occupied Liége and Seraing the Cockerill workshops naturally refused to work for them, since the Germans wished them to make munitions for them. The German Colonel Keppel then assumed the direction of the works, promising the workers an increased salary of 50 per cent. And this officer did not blush to sign his proclamation: "Attaché of the German Government at the Liége Exposition." He had consequently profited by his privileged situation in Belgium in order to make himself familiar with the organization of the Cockerill works. But it must be supposed that matters were too difficult for him, for Herren Koester and Noske (Kriegsfahrten, p. 21) assert that he had to abandon the position.

The Mentality of the German Soldiers at the beginning of the Campaign.

Until the very last moment our enemies deluded themselves as to the loyalty of the Belgians: they still hoped that the latter would only resist as a matter of form. This idea is openly expressed in the Chancellor's speech of the 2nd December; it is also implicitly contained in the proclamation of General von Emmich (see 6th Report, I). The officers and soldiers who crossed the frontier at the beginning of the war were quite bewildered by the unforeseen resistance of the Belgian Army; this is what the German prisoners interned at Bruges tell their relatives; they even go so far as to deplore having to fight a neutral country.

Letters from German Prisoners of War.

We hear from Belgium:—

The correspondence of the German prisoners of war (to the number of about two thousand) who, at the beginning of the war, were interned in the barracks of the Bruges Lancers, has passed almost entirely through our hands.

All say they are well treated. Some even hope that the Belgian prisoners in Germany will be as well treated as they. One wounded soldier in a Bruges hospital relates that the Belgians treat the German wounded like brothers; another speaks only of his "Belgian comrades"! The good food served to them seems to make a great impression. Most of them say, "We have enough to eat"; or even, "We have food in abundance." Only one complains of "beer without flavour and bad wine"; but another says with much simplicity: "The people here are very kind to us, for we have enough to eat and drink." The word for is amusing....

The letters of the officers are quite different. No more joy because their lives are safe. The war absorbs them entirely. They are warriors at heart and the struggle interests them passionately. They know nothing of what is happening, or rather they are not told what is happening, and they want to know ... to know, and it is painful to hear in each letter the same question: what news? The forced inactivity becomes a torture. Boredom presses on them: they are discouraged and greatly disillusioned; they had hoped to pass very rapidly across Belgium (it must be remembered that at this time the war was only beginning, that Brussels was not yet occupied, and that the letters date from this period).

The attack upon Belgium does not seem to please a great many of them. "We have attacked a neutral country," says a medical officer, "and we shall now have to suffer the eventual consequences."

"When we got out of the train," says another, "we received the order to fight against Belgium, a thing which is to me and to all highly antipathetic. But what is commanded has to be executed."

"The attack on Belgium was from the first a shameful thing."

"We violated Belgium before any declaration of war had been made"!

All the letters show how little the resistance of Liége was expected. Many say: "Of all our company, of our battalion, of our regiment, there are left only so many or so many men." One relates how in a few minutes his colonel, his major, the captains, and nearly all the lieutenants were mown down by the balls. "We are all mightily deluded," admits another; "we were too confident; we thought the Belgians were disheartened"! "The Belgians fight like lions," says another.

German Lies respecting the Occupation of Liége.

It is the truth, although the news is partly from a German source, that the Germans entered Belgium on the night of the 3rd of August; they crossed the frontier near Gemmenich at two o'clock in the morning, and the following night (of the 4th of August) they were already attempting an attack upon Liége. But the official telegrams from Berlin have never mentioned this date. To make it believed that the capture of Liége was extremely rapid and that the German army had met with no serious resistance, the staff pruned the siege of Liége at both ends; it made the operation commence on the 5th August instead of the 4th, and declared that it was already completed by the 7th August.

We could not give a more precise idea of the manner in which the Government and its "reptile Press" deceives public opinion than by reproducing two telegrams relating to the fall of Liége. On the 7th of August, having reported the entrance of the troops into Belgium on the previous day, the telegrams announced the capture of the fortress of Liége.[13] Note this: the capture of the fortress (Festung). Now the Germans had merely occupied the town of Liége, a town absolutely open, without ramparts or defences of any kind. They themselves were forced to own, on the 10th, that the forts had not been captured; but they added that the guns were no longer firing, which was false (p. [50]).

Berlin, 7th August.—Our advance guard entered Belgium the day before yesterday, along the whole frontier. A small division attempted, with great valour, a surprise attack upon Liége. A few cavalrymen pushed on into the city, and attempted to seize the commandant, who was only able to escape by flight. The surprise attack against the fortress, constructed according to modern principles, did not succeed. Our troops are before the fortress, in contact with the enemy. Naturally the whole enemy Press will describe this enterprise as a defeat; but it has no influence on the great operations; for us it is only an isolated fact in the history of the war, and a proof of the aggressive courage of our troops.

(Kr. D. des K. Z., p. 9.)

Berlin, 7th August. Official. (Wolff Agency.)—The fortress of Liége is taken. After the divisions, which had attempted a surprise attack upon Liége, had been reinforced, the attack was pushed to a successful termination. This morning at 8 o'clock the fortress was in the power of Germany.

(Kr. D. des K. Z., p. 11.)

However, it was necessary to prevent the bad effect which would be produced on the population by foreign communiqués announcing that the German army was continuing to besiege Liége after taking it. After the complete success announced on the 7th the task was, in fact, rather difficult. How was it to be effected?

(a) Discredit might be thrown on news coming from abroad, for example, by "demonstrating" its untruthfulness. Der Lügenfeldzug gives on p. 19 the announcement of the taking of Liége, and on the following page the Havas telegram stating that Liége is not taken. What will the superficial reader conclude if he does not take the trouble to dissect the telegrams? That the Allies are shameless liars, going to the length of denying the obvious. But examine the dates: Liége was taken, according to the Germans, on the 7th August, at 8 a.m., while the Allies declare that Liége is not taken—on the 6th! And to think that the book which perpetrates this trickery is entitled Der Lügenfeldzug unserer Feinde ("Our Enemies' Campaign of Lies")! and that it undertakes the mission of calling attention to the lies and calumnies of the enemy in order to correct them!

(b) To establish confusion between the city and the fortress. As early as the 7th August the false newsmongers were rejoicing over the taking of the fortress, intentionally confusing the city and the fortified place, so that the reader of these communiqués no longer knows what to think, and naturally accepts the official news of his own country.

The sudden Attack upon France is checked.

To understand how completely it was in Germany's interest to create the belief that Liége was taken in two days by a small body of troops, we must remember that the object of the Germans was to traverse Belgium as rapidly as possible, in order to crush the French and capture Paris. The author of J'accuse reports the remark of old Marshal von Haeseler, who proposed to celebrate in Paris the anniversary of Sedan—on the 2nd September, 1914. We ourselves copied a charcoal inscription written on the front of a house burned down at Battice, making an appointment in Paris for the 2nd September with a certain regiment of artillery.

Now this sudden march was completely spoiled and the German plan of campaign undone by the unexpected resistance of the Belgians, first at Liége, then at Hesbays. This loss of a few days was fatal to Germany, and Germany bears us malice on that account.

The Disinterested Behaviour of Belgium.

One last point as to the violation of our neutrality.

The Germans now pretend to pity the poor Belgians, who allowed themselves to be fooled by England as much as by their King and Government, and who, by their credulity, brought the war upon themselves. But what am I saying?—the German Government assures the world that we ourselves desired the war. Official Germany has become incapable of conceiving that a people should remain faithful to its international obligations, and if need be sacrifice itself for them.

"Why," our adversaries ask us, "did you not accept the proposals of Germany? You would have profited by them." And indeed our eastern neighbours offered us £200,000 as the price of our complicity (F. Bettix, Der Krieg).

It would be very interesting to know on what data Germany calculates the value of a nation's honour; in any case, we may assure her that no one in the world would be so simple as to offer so great a sum for hers.

For the rest, as far as we Belgians are concerned our interest has never entered into our calculations. It was not in order to profit by it that we resisted Germany; it was because we judged that such was our obligation as an honest nation. And yet, as the Minister, M. Carton de Wiart, remarked, at the Hotel de Ville in Paris, on the 20th December, 1914, we had, even then, the vision of our country ravaged by the Prussian hordes; but even to-day, after suffering such terrible atrocities, there is not a Belgian "who would change his poverty for the profits of a bandit."

FOOTNOTES:

[6] The Germans do not like one to quote these words of Herr Bethmann-Hollweg. A series of pamphlets, Histoire de la guerre de 1914, which has appeared in Brussels during the occupation, reports the last conversation of the Chancellor with the British Ambassador on the 4th of August, 1914 (p. 206), but the "scrap of paper" does not figure therein: the censorship suppressed this too compromising passage.

[7] See, for example, Bernhardi's How Germany makes War, pp. 190, 191, 192. On the 4th of March, 1882, the Nord. Allg. Zeit. declared: "Germany has no political motive for violating Belgian neutrality, but the military advantage which might result forces her thereto." Emile Bauning, La Belgique au point de vue Militaire et International, Brussels, 1906, p. 58.

[8] Apparently such unusual honesty cannot long survive in the mind of a German diplomatist. The phrase is in its proper place in the French text, but it is lacking in the Flemish text, which is printed facing it.

[9] K.Z., 2nd December, 1st edition, morning, published the same revelations. This article is more complete than that printed in Brussels. We hasten to correct a numerical error which renders the opening of the second paragraph incomprehensible: it states that five years had elapsed between 1905 and 1914. According to the K.Z. one should read 1909 instead of 1905.

[10] The same lie figures in Lüttich, p. 5.

[11] The French text here quoted is that which was posted up. The German text, also posted, states that Belgium had long ago carefully armed the civil population (see p. [208]).

[12] An article on "Flemings and Walloons" in K.Z. for 13th March (noon edition), declares that Belgium knew nothing of chauvinism, nor even, adds the writer, of nationalism.

[13] These lies die hard. Herren Koester and Noske, in the introduction of their book, Kreigsfahrten durch Belgiën und Nordfrankreich, literally state: "The German troops entered Belgium on the 6th of August; on the following day the fortress of Liége had been taken by assault."

CHAPTER II
VIOLATIONS OF THE HAGUE CONVENTION

A.—The "Reprisals against Francs-tireurs."

Under the pretext that France was making ready to attack her, Germany hastened to invade Belgium and Luxemburg. But France was not preparing to invade the Rhine provinces of Prussia, and this pretended threat of aggression was merely a trick, intended to frighten Parliament, and to obtain a vote approving the actions of the Ministry and giving it carte blanche. The manœuvre completely succeeded; the Government received a unanimous vote, in spite of the Chancellor's admission: "We are committing an injustice, and we are violating the law of nations; but when one is driven into a corner as we are, all means are good."

We discovered immediately, alas! what these words meant. Hardly had the German soldiers crossed the frontier, when they began to burn and massacre.

Murders committed by the Germans from the outset.

On the very day of the invasion—the 4th August—a motor-car carrying four German officers arrived at Herve, and then pulled up. One of the officers demanded information of a youth of sixteen, one Dechêne; the latter did not understand, or perhaps refused to reply (which was his right, and even his duty towards his country); we do not know, but in any case the officer shot him with his revolver.

On the 4th of August, too, the Germans shot peaceful citizens at Visé, when the 2nd battalion of the 12th regiment of the line, under Major Collyns, had the audacity to resist them. Of course they pretended that the civilians took part in the fighting. A few days later they burned the church and the greater part of the town.

One sees plainly from these, and too many other examples, what was the object of our enemies: (a) They wished to terrorize the population, in order to make them more amenable to requisitions and demands of all kinds; (b) they wished to make their own troops believe that in fighting the Belgians—which they at first did with great unwillingness—they were merely defending themselves against treacherous attacks; (c) they wished to multiply opportunities of pillage; (d) finally, perhaps, they reckoned that by displaying to the Belgian Government the horrors to which its first refusal had exposed the country, they would induce it to reconsider its position and could obtain from it a free passage.

Were there any "Francs-tireurs"?

It would be impossible at this moment to state that the Belgians never, at any point of the frontier, fired upon the invaders. Let us remark, moreover, that if they did they would have been, from the purely human point of view, perfectly excusable.[14] What! here is Germany, who, pretending to be in a state of legitimate defence, falls unawares upon an inoffensive third party! And this third party had no right to oppose force to violence! In all logic, was it not Belgium that was in a state of legitimate defence; was it not for Belgium that all means were good? And notice, please, that it was not against an imagined and imaginary menace that we were defending ourselves: the Germans had most undeniably invaded Belgium. Would it have been astonishing if the Belgians, exasperated by this unspeakable aggression, had seized their rifles? In sane justice, one could not regard such action as a grievance; on the contrary. Does this mean that we believe in the story of civilians attacking the German army? Most certainly not; because we know from reliable sources that in every case where it has been possible to hold an inquiry, this inquiry has shown that the "francs-tireurs" were merely the pretext; the real motive for all the devastation and massacre was the desire to terrorize the population. It is, therefore, in a fashion entirely theoretical, and with the most express reserves, that we admit, in default of opportunity to investigate, in each case, the affirmations of our enemies, that in some cases, certainly extremely rare, isolated civilians, or small groups of civilians, may have been taken with arms in their hands. But our enemies will please admit also that the attitude of these civilians would have been amply excused by the more than brutal fashion in which the Germans behaved from the very first moments of the war. Let us add that when one erects terror into a system, as the Germans do, one should understand the defensive reflexes of the victims.

What were the rights of our enemies in these exceptional cases? They could, as they themselves proclaim, have shot the individual offenders, and, for once in a way, have burned their houses. But nothing in the world could justify the executions en masse and the wholesale burnings to which the Germans surrendered themselves.

The Obsession of the "Franc-tireur" in the German Army.

One point at first remained obscure to us in the German "reprisals": how did the German officers induce their men to commit this horrible carnage? Very simply: their minds were worked upon beforehand; they were crammed with legends of francs-tireurs dating from the war of 1870-71, and were made to believe that the Belgian population was revoltingly brutal. So as soon as they set foot on our territory they expected to be attacked by civilians, and, very naturally, prepared to sell their lives dearly.

Nothing is more typical in this respect than the collection of soldiers' letters published for the edification of the German nation in Der Deutsche Krieg in Feldpostbriefen.—I. Lüttich, Namur, Antwerpen. In more than half is there mention of "francs-tireurs"; but scarcely ever does the writer speak of having himself seen them. Read, for example, the first letter (that is No. 2 in the volume, for Letter No. 1 is not a soldier's letter). The writer, an officer, asserts that during the attack on the forts of Liége, on the night of the 6th of August, the night was so dark that it was impossible to distinguish friends from enemies, and that the Germans were firing on one another. Nevertheless, as they were fired on, and as they saw three men running, they immediately shot them as "francs-tireurs." During this same night their baggage-column having been surprised (he does not say by whom), a village was burned and the inhabitants were shot.

The whole mentality of the German soldier in respect of civilians is reflected in this letter; it is so dark that the Germans fire on one another, but that does not prevent them from recognizing that those attacking them are "francs-tireurs," even though their men are "falling en masse," which excludes all idea of francs-tireurs.