In The Lands Of Refuge

( Originally Published 1915 )

THE GREAT EXODUS

FROM the first days of the invasion thousands of the inhabitants of the provinces of Liége and Luxemburg emigrated some to the north where Dutch Limburg, quite close at hand, offered a safe asylum or to the west, to the rear of the Belgian lines; and others to the south, to France.

Then, as the " Mailed Fist " multiplied its blows and showered them on a greater area of the violated soil, this sorrowful exodus increased. At the same time the " western front " was formed, so that those who wished to enter France had to make a roundabout journey in the west.

It was a harrowing spectacle to see these poor folk generally stricken in their dearest affections, and almost all ruined departing along the roads with all they had managed to save from the rapine of our enemies; little groups or long processions of country folk forsaking their burning villages (3o) ; and groups or convoys of townspeople, fleeing in all haste from their towns or cities, for these, too, were given over to pillage and incendiarism. It was an unspeakably painful sight, and to understand all its bitterness one must have known how deeply the Belgian is attached to his native soil and how dearly he loves his home. . .

Hundreds and thousands of unfortunates had been forced thus to fly in order to avoid death or deportation, and to seek some place of shelter; for whole villages and whole cities had been evacuated.

At the beginning of October this lamentable exodus assumed, for a period of some days, such vast proportions that nothing in the history of humanity can be compared with it. Between the first days of the month when a great number of the houses in the outskirts of Antwerp had to be evacuated and the 14th, when the Germans advanced as far as the coast, nearly a million persons emigrated. Trains crowded with passengers left for the coast and for Holland. On the Scheldt every means of trans-port was utilised; even lighters, which were towed by small steamers. And on the roads of Flanders, and in the north of the province of Antwerp, there was an unheard-of concourse of pedestrians and vehicles of every species; immense processions in which all classes of society were mingled; in which there were rich people and invalids and wounded soldiers, infants in arms and poor old men at the end of their days, who would certainly never return from exile.

Today there are Belgian refugees almost everywhere; but it is in Holland, France, and England that they are most numerous.

IN HOLLAND

It was first of all Limburg, and then the provinces of Zeeland and North Brabant, which in Holland received the first streams of the Belgian immigration.

Into Dutch Limburg the tide of immigration flowed without great variations; but this was not the case with Zeeland or Brabant, where the Belgian refugees arrived, at the time of the siege of Antwerp, at the rate of some hundreds of thousands (600,000, it is believed) in a few days.

Zeeland received not only the fugitives from Antwerp, who arrived directly by boat, but also those from Gand, Bruges, Os-tend, and other parts of Flanders, who had travelled by road to the Dutch territory lying on the left bank of the Scheldt.

Through Sluis, a little frontier town containing only a few hundreds of inhabitants, 60,000 persons passed in October; on certain days the little Zeeland town had its population increased tenfold. At Hontenisse, which contained rather more than five thousand inhabitants, there were, about the 15th of October, 18,000 refugees; certain farmhouses gave shelter to as many as 300.

The 2,000 inhabitants of Aardenburg had to entertain nearly 3,000 immigrants. The 1,200 inhabitants of Hansweert on the canal which joins the two arms of the Scheldt saw 175,000 fugitives pass by! On the 21st of December, 2,500 immigrants were still there, living, for the most part, on the big Rhine boats. or barges.

At Flushing, as at Hansweert, numbers of boats arrived from Antwerp, laden to the gunwale. Many people came, too, from Flanders, by steamer from Breskens. The more well-to-do embarked, for the most part on steamers of the Flushing to Folkestone line; the rest remained in Zeeland or scattered through the interior of the country.

In northern Brabant the fugitives made more especially for Roosendael and Bergen-op-Zoom, where they arrived in bodies of thousands at a time.

During the first few days the little town of Bergen-op-Zoom had to entertain 50,000 refugees; about 10,000 of these lodged with the inhabitants, and the rest camped out as best they could, in the churches and schools, in available sheds or barns, in the tents sent as an emergency measure by the Dutch Ministry of War (31), and even in tilted waggons.

At Roosendael, whence the refugees were sent by rail to all parts of Holland, there was at certain moments, especially at the railway station, a congestion and a confusion which no spectator could ever forget.

In the course of this great and hurried exodus friends and relatives lost sight of one another. How were they to find one another again?

At the time of their flight from Antwerp some fugitives were inspired to write in chalk, on the walls of the villages they passed through, such indications as this: " Marie van der Meylen is on her way to Capellen " Charles Franken, your little boy is at Capellen with your brother Jean."

This example was followed by many refugees. At Roosendael, a great cross-roads, the walls were covered with these original advertisements. At Roosendael, too, a worthy priest who had collected a few lost children had the idea of exhibiting these little ones, one by one, from the height of the pulpit: " Whose is this pretty little girl? Whose is this nice little boy? "

The Dutch illustrated newspapers Panorama in particular did their best to facilitate these agonising quests by publishing under the heading: " Who Will Help Us to Search?" or: (32) " Where is Mama? "—the portraits of lost children, some of whom were too young to give the slightest indication which would facilitate their identification.

At the end of October a portion of these refugees mostly inhabitants of Antwerp returned to their homes. At the same time others began to leave for England. But without counting the interned prisoners soldiers who crossed the frontier to avoid being taken prisoner by the Germans there still remained in Holland, at the beginning of 1915, 200,000 Belgian refugees, distributed among 815 communes (there being 1,121 in the country) or in camps constructed for the purpose, which are perfect model villages. To-day this number is reduced to 8o,000, of whom 25,000 are indigent.

Occupation is provided, as far as possible, for all these poor uprooted people (refugees and interned prisoners). In some localities the men make articles of furniture, and even portable houses, which are immediately utilised, and will, moreover, be of service when the return to Belgium begins, when everything will have to be " remade "; and the women almost everywhere are employed in dressmaking or tailoring, making clothes for the refugees themselves and also for those interned.

Besides the Central Commission and some 85o local committees or sub-committees, with which the official Commission is constantly in touch, all sorts of societies, inspired by the noblest sentiments, have been established to assist the Belgian refugees.

The refugees themselves have founded several societies; they have established schools, too, and have started a number of news-papers published in French and in Flemish.

Finally, an " Official Belgian Committee for the Netherlands " was established at The Hague some months ago. Its mission is to assist, under the direction of the Belgian Legation, " the numerous organisations which have been formed or will yet be formed for the amelioration of the moral and material position of the Belgians in Holland."

IN FRANCE

Just as they fled to Holland, so thousands of Belgians who were driven from their homes by the German invasion entered France in the' early days of the war.

When the soil of France was itself invaded, this migration, which had become more difficult, was considerably lessened. But it rose again, attaining extraordinary figures, when the Germans, after the fall of Antwerp, moved onward to the coast and to the Yser.

On the day before the enemy reached Ostend, and even on the same day, there was a formidable exodus, chiefly along the road from Nieuport to Dunkirk, but also by sea. " At Calais," writes a correspondent of Le Temps, " one saw them entering the harbour a host of small fishing-boats from the Belgian coast, from Blankenberghe, Heyst, Nieuport, Ostend, or La Panne. What a heart-breaking spectacle met the eyes when these poor people landed ! They were packed together on the narrow decks of the small sailing-boats, unfortunate families who had been able to save and bring away with them only a little linen and the few trifling objects to which they were most attached."

And what trials many of these unfortunate people had to undergo!

In October, 1914, a train which was carrying several hundreds of Belgian refugees was derailed between Calais and Boulogne; twenty to thirty persons were killed or seriously wounded. A few days later a large French steamer, the Amiral Ganteaume, which was sailing from Calais to La Pallice with 2,500 passengers, of whom many were Belgian emigrants, was torpedoed by a German submarine. Thirty persons were either killed by the explosion or drowned during the salvage operations.

On the 11th of December, 1915, the powder works established by the Belgian Staff at Graville-Sainte-Honorine, less than two miles from Havre, were destroyed by a terrible explosion, and there were hundreds of victims among the workers nearly all refugees!

During the early months of the war M. Hymans, Minister of State,' visited some of the French centres where numerous Belgian refugees had found' asylum. He recorded his impressions in the following words :-

" I was able to form an idea of the profound moral distress of our unfortunate exiles. The refugees whom I have seen are for the most part inhabitants of Hainault, the Borinage, or the Charleroi district, who fled before the horrors of the invasion. As far as is possible they are given occupation. But they are, in general, miners or metal-workers, little accustomed to agricultural labours and unskilled at such, and the total upheaval of all their habits and ways of life has completely disconcerted them. The old people especially are to be pitied. I had only to speak a few words, to refer in very simple phrases to their villages, to their native countryside, to our Belgium, and they all began to shed tears. Many of them moreover are anxious about their relatives of whom they have no news. . . . I attempted everywhere to give details and to reassure them. And everywhere there were the same frantic shouts of ' Vive la Belgique!' and ' Vine le Roi,' when I left a group of refugees, having comforted each of them as best I could."

At the present time there are more than 200,000 Belgian refugees in France.

All sorts of committees have been established in France, the most important being under the direction of M. Schollaert, President of the Chamber of Representatives. This is the " Official Belgian Committee for the Assistance of Refugees."

Thanks to the devotion and enterprise of these committees, and thanks also to the fraternal feeling of the French populations, the Belgian refugees are to-day distributed, as judiciously as possible, throughout all- the French Departments, and work has been found for nearly all those men whose age or physical inaptitude prevents them from rallying to the colours.

But there are others in France besides the simple " refugees." In the hospitals there are thousands of Belgian wounded, and in the training camps in Normandy and Brittany thousands of young able-bodied Belgians have responded with patriotic enthusiasm to this appeal of the Government (66):-

Driven from their towns and villages by the horrors of the invasion, numerous Belgian families have been forced to seek a refuge abroad. They have found this refuge in hospitable countries where the public authorities, like the populations, have shown them a degree of kindness of which the Nation will retain the most grateful memory.

On all these families the same obligation is incumbent:

Let them never forget their native country, where their kinsfolk, friends, and comrades are suffering so cruelly! Let them endeavour, by their courage and their dignity in these days of trial, still further to increase the sympathy with which Belgium is regarded all the world over by all upright minds and all generous hearts! Let their thoughts, their hopes, and their actions be always directed toward this sacred goal: the liberation of Belgian territory. .

In the name of the King and of the Nation we address a solemn appeal to all able-bodied Belgians, and especially to those between the ages of eighteen and thirty years, that they will enlist as volunteers for the duration of the war.

We rely upon all to do their duty.

The victim of a crime to which History affords no parallel, Belgium had never greater claims and a greater right to the help of her children ! Let them all, under the leadership of a King of whom we are proud, endeavour to hasten the hour when we shall once more stand united, free and independent on the soil of that beloved mother-country whose sufferings have rendered her still more dear!

This " Appeal to Belgians Residing Aboard " was issued by the Belgian Government on the 26th of October from Sainte-Adresse, near Havre.

There the Government had been installed since its departure from Ostend.

M. André Tudesq has given in Le Journal a picturesque and very accurate description of the Government's temporary quarters. I quote a few passages :

" It is something better than a mere fiction, something more than a chance refuge : it is a veritable principality!

" Here resides a Government with all its prerogatives. It is able to exercise the least of its rights. Its constitution is in force. It is limited only by its own laws. It is more than a guest; it is a sovereign.

" After the fall of the Antwerp forts and the dangerous halt at Ostend, the Belgian Ministers, on the invitation of France, transferred their Council and their departments to Havre. Then we were in the grip of such perilous events that we regarded it as nothing more than a chance vicissitude of warfare. But this transfer of à Government beyond the frontiers of its country is without precedent in history. Moreover, have we not a monarchical Government operating within the Republic? . . .

Lodging having been found, and the protocol having said its say, a decree of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs conferred the privilege of extra-territoriality upon all the buildings which sheltered the Ministers and their staffs. This was not a mere act of politeness, but a genuine concession, with all the rights appertaining thereto. Thus at the very outset, as a sign of occupation, the national colours the black, yellow, and red were hoisted above each palace.

" I have visited these administrative buildings and these private houses. Here they are as they appear today:

" The Hostelry (37) , a charming manor-house in the Norman style, houses the majority of their Excellencies and their families. In a salon on the ground floor the Council of Ministers meets. . . . The Governmental departments, offices, and records are installed in the Place Frédéric Sauvage, in a vast building which had never been occupied. Seven rooms go to each department. At the entrance is nailed the sign : ` Palace of the Ministries.' On the ground floor a vast chamber has been reserved for the Chamber of Representatives; at the present moment a department directed by M. Schollaert, President of the Chamber, and the record department of the Senate are at work here. Two Ministers are separately housed : the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of War, which occupy large villas. . .

" By the entrances of the villas and the Palace sentry-boxes have been erected, painted with the national colours. There Belgian gendarmes mount guard. Five hundred form the garrison. There are also police-stations in the Avenue des Régates, at the Hostelry, and in the Place Frédéric-Sauvage.

" But the principality does not end here. The Belgian Posts and Telegraphs have replaced the old French post-office; and a standard has been erected to carry the telephone wires connecting Ministry with Ministry. Letters arrive daily, by special couriers, from the General Headquarters and from Furnes. Here, too, are sold those curious stamps (36) which will one day be the joy of collectors; bearing the portrait of the King, they are post marked ` Le Havre—Spécial.'

" Beside every Government, to uphold its sovereignty, is a diplomatic corps. This is not lacking here; with the exception of the representative of France, M. Klobukowski, for whom the Villa Villeroy was reserved on the Boulevard Maritime, the Ministers Plenipotentiary, Ministers, and Military Attachés of other nations are housed in the Hotel des Régates. Here are represented the Holy See, Great Britain, Russia, Roumania, Holland, Italy, Brazil, Greece, Japan, Norway, Spain, Chili in a word all the Allied and friendly nations.

" There is also a Royal Palace. Albert I. has not yet inaugurated it; he will come here later on. And this is the reason —a touching one: since the invasion the King has never left the soil of Belgium. He has always remained at the head of his troops, who are defending the last portion of Belgian territory. . . . The King remains in his kingdom; so long as he is there Belgium stands with her face to the enemy, free and sovereign. . . .

"Created in theory, the principality has gradually come to life. Nearly 2,500 Belgians inhabit it, from the Minister to the simple militia-man waiting to be enrolled. Its rebaptised boulevards, which will henceforth be known as Boulevard Albert I., Boulevard du Roi-des-Belges, are busy with a hurrying crowd, all of whom bear, in the buttonhole or on the bosom of the dress, the national colours.

" Charity fêtes are organised every week; here the exiled colony assembles. The Te Deum is sung in the church for the victory of the Allied arms and the speedy liberation of the mother country."

In addition to the administrative departments of State there have also been created, in France, all sorts of official or semi-official departments, and a multitude of undertakings of which the mere catalogue would be eloquent of the noble valour and the methodical spirit with which the Belgians are striving to vanquish all the difficulties which confronted them so suddenly and implacably.

IN SWITZERLAND

In Switzerland also the Belgian refugees are comparatively numerous; there are some 2,500 who are provided with homes by the care of committees which have been formed in the cantons of Vaud, Geneva, Neuchâtel, Fribourg, Le Valais, and Berne, and 1,000 who live upon their own resources.

After their grievous adventures all find a safe and peaceful shelter on this hospitable soil, where they are surrounded by universal good will. Moreover, our cause has rallied the suffrages of all the citizens of the Swiss Confederation, and their support finds free expression, for of all neutral countries Switzer-land has best understood that political neutrality does not exclude the manifestation of the sentiment of human solidarity.

IN ENGLAND

Necessarily limited to the capacity of a few cross-Channel steamers, the emigration to England could always be regulated, and it was always relatively moderate.

None the less, at the time of the great exodus, between the 7th and the 14th of October, 1914, no less than 26,000 fugitives were landed in Folkestone harbour. A large number arrived at Tilbury also, and on the 14th of October hundreds of fugitives who had embarked upon fishing-boats arrived at Ramsgate and other small harbours of the south-east coast. Finally, England received the surplus of the Dutch immigration.

At the present time more than 18o,000 Belgian refugees are awaiting in England the liberation of their national territory; while many thousands of Belgian wounded are being treated in English hospitals.

Wounded and refugees alike enjoy the most cordial hospitality in the bosom of the great friendly nation; they are surrounded by touching solicitude and exquisite kindness. I have seen, in one of the great London railway stations, a numerous crowd, in which there were frock-coated, silk-hatted old gentlemen, form up in line and uncover at the passing of a miserable procession of humble Belgian country folk who had just arrived, and this silent sympathy, which so well displayed the British tact, was singularly affecting. I was by chance present at a little town in Surrey at the inauguration of a home for Belgian refugees. It was a pretty, cheerful villa which a local committee had placed at the disposal of four lower-middle-class families. In the common dining-room there were flowers on all the tables, and on the walls were fine portraits of the King and Queen of the Belgians and of General Leman. And it is the same everywhere.

And our dead, too, are honoured in a touching manner by this truly great nation. I have seen a private soldier, a little volunteer of seventeen years of age, given a funeral worthy of a general. Our poor, beloved dead! They are so many already in certain English cemeteries that they have been united in the same corner of the soil. One day monuments will be erected; in the meantime there are simple crosses, with inscriptions such as this: " Here lie Belgian soldiers who died in defending the honour and the independence of their country."

A number of institutions and societies, and hundreds upon hundreds of committees, of which the " War Refugee Committee " is the most important, have been created in England for the benefit of the Belgian exiles.

Once the first moment of stupefaction was over and it was over quickly the refugees themselves initiated numerous organisations for mutual social assistance. They have even formed important professional organisations.

All those who were capable of bearing arms eagerly responded to the appeal of the Government, which was eloquently interpreted in England by M. Vandervelde. Others sought such work as they could obtain in factories, on the railways, etc. Thousands of men and women are to-day manufacturing munitions.

The " intellectuals " and the business men, who are particularly numerous among the Belgians who have taken refuge in England, have from the first displayed remarkable activity, and have manifested in every imaginable fashion that indomitable will to live which will save our nation.

Belgian companies of every nature colonial and commercial, banks, shipbuilding companies, which build warships and even fishing-boats are managed from London or other great English centres, while conferences, exhibitions, and all manner of manifestations of Belgian courage and patriotism are continually held in all parts of the country.

Those were truly no idle words with which our great Verhaeren, a few months before the war, ended a lecture on one of the greatest painters of the Flemish school: " There is something about this country which, though it be trampled underfoot by no matter what other of the world's nations, yet it always re-awakens, revives, and comes to life again. It is like the great popular hero, Tyl Uilenspiegel, who, in the depths of his tomb, stands erect once more, turning again to life, and who, suddenly taking the hand of the charming and candid Nele, departs under the eyes of the grave-diggers, crying to them : ' Do men bury Uilenspiegel, the spirit, and Nele, the heart of Mother Flanders? They may slumber, but never die ! ' "

One of the most interesting manifestations of that ardent will to live which sustains us amid our misfortunes is the appearance of Belgian newspapers in England, France, and Holland.

Barely a week after the exodus from Ostend the Indépendance Belge reappeared in London. " Founded on the creation of the kingdom of Belgium," it said in the first number of the new series (on the 21st of October), "our old Indépendance Belge would not and could not disappear." At the end of a week it was printing editions of thirty thousand copies.

During the first days of exile another important Belgian news-paper, the Antwerp Métropole, reappeared in London, when the Standard, whose circulation is a large one, reserved it a daily page for a period of some months.

Later on a colonial newspaper, the Tribune Congolaise, of Antwerp, also appeared in London. Then new journals wereestablished, La Belgique Nouvelle and the Écho de Belgique, both of which are weeklies.

I cite from memory the Franco-Belge and the Courrier Belge, both of which had only an ephemeral existence, one appearing at Folkestone and one at Derby.

In France we have the XXe Siècle, of Brussels, which has appeared at Havre since the 12th of November, 1914, its object being to " come to the help . . . of the thousands of Belgians . driven from their homes and scattered through France, England, Switzerland, and Holland," and its ambition " to contribute to the maintenance of that concord which, from the first days of the war, has mitigated and ennobled our misfortunes, and which, today more than ever, is to our compatriots the most precious of all possessions." There are also published at Havre, besides the Moniteur Belge, which is an official journal, the Courrier de l'Armée, Het Vaderland, a Flemish journal, etc.; while in Paris there are the Patrie Belge and the Nouvelle Belgique.

In Holland the Echo Belge is published in Amsterdam. This, in its first number, undertook to maintain in its readers " a patriotic hope and the certitude that our poor country will emerge the greater from the horrible cataclysm "; in Rotterdam appears La Belgique; at The Hague De Vlaamsche Stem, the Belgisch Dagblad, and Vri) België; at Bergen-op-Zoom the Echo d'An-vers, and at Maestricht Les Uouvelles.

All these newspapers are of passionate interest to the Belgians. All speak with calm resignation of our trials and with a warm confidence of our hopes and aspirations. Each one is a free platform from which men of talent, who mean to remain free, attack with a radiant optimism all the social and economic questions which the renovation of our country will raise in the near future.

In the early days of the war these Belgian newspapers appearing abroad used to print, under such headings as " On cherche," "Pour se retrouver," or the like, advertisements in which husbands, mothers, and children who had become separated sought to let one another know where they had found asylum. Here are a few examples:

" The Jonckheere children, of Eerneghem, ask for news of their mother and their brother Maurice. Write to___," etc.

Monfort, Joseph, Leuze, Longchamps, Namur, asks for news of wife and little girl, of whom nothing is known since end of August. Those who can give any information whatever are begged to write," etc.

" M. and Mme. Feltesse ask for news of their son Lucien, boy scout, motor-cyclist, and orderly; with a Belgian ambulance at the front. Write," etc.

" Dr. Deprez, of Kinshasa, Belgian Congo, asks for news of his parents, living at Wavre, Chaussée de Nivelles, 68. Write," etc.

" Léonie Rousse, aged five years, . . . is looking for her father, Joseph Rousse. The child is now with M. Ilmer, game-keeper, at Sint-Annaland."

" Alphonse Janssen, now care of M. Lasaay, Walstraat, 78, Flushing, is seeking his wife and child."

" Pierre Possemiers, 41 years, seeks his wife, née Philomène Hallewaetters, and his seven children. He is at Vollenhoor."

What anxiety, what anguish are expressed in these few lines, taken at random from some of these newspapers six months after the beginning of the war!