In Occupied Belgium

( Originally Published 1915 )

THERE are 7,000,000 Belgians in those parts of Belgium which are occupied by the Germans. Free but lately as but few peoples were free, they have now, for more than two years, been sequestered, immured in their own country, or even in their towns or villages if they are capable of military service. A wall of steel and fire on the one hand, and on the other a fence of iron wire through which a powerful electric current circulates, and along which pitiless sentinels are posted (52) these divide them from civilisation. Morally and materially these seven millions of human beings are living a tragedy whose full horror it is difficult to conceive.

" The despairing rumours of this tragedy," says Maeterlinck, " reach us only through the fissures of the bloody wall which isolates it from the rest of the world. . . All Belgium is now no more than a vast Prussian prison, in which all cries are cruelly and methodically stifled, and where no other voices are heard but those of the gaolers. Only now and again, after a thousand adventures, after passing through a thousand dangers, a letter from a kinsman, from a captive friend, reaches us from the depth of this immense in pace and brings us a gleam of authentic truth. . .

Considering the material situation of our poor country, my eminent fellow-countryman continues:—" In a country before all else industrial, which normally, in time of peace, was already producing less than a quarter of the wheat necessary for its consumption, the enemy has systematically requisitioned everything, seized upon everything for the maintenance of his armies, and has sent into Germany what he could not consume on the spot. The result of so monstrous a manoeuvre may readily be imagined : in all this territory, lately so fortunate and so wealthy, to-day held to ransom, pillaged, and pillaged again, ravaged, devastated by steel and by fire, there is left nothing." in all this territory, lately so fortunate and so wealthy, today held to ransom pillaged again, ravaged, devastated by steel and by fire, there is left-nothing."

Words, perhaps you may say? Exaggerations? We shall see!

To give us some idea of what the German occupation of Belgium means, nothing can exceed the value of the notices, decrees, and proclamations drafted or inspired by the German rulers themselves. These are reliable and irrefutable witnesses.

They refer to all the manifestations of the life of the op-pressed nation, and they are extremely numerous; a volume the size of this would certainly not suffice to contain them all. I will therefore confine myself to reproducing a few, which I shall comment upon only as far as is necessary. Read them attentively :

On the 21st of August, 1914, a fortnight after the Germans had entered the city of Liége, the burgomaster, M. Kleyer, informed his fellow-citizens (by order) that:

The front doors of houses must remain open all night.

Windows overlooking the street must be lit up, shutters and blinds remaining undrawn.

All movement in the streets must cease at 7 o'clock German time (6 p.m. by Belgian time).

A proclamation posted up at Namur, on the 25th of August, 1914, signed by the " Commandant of the Fortress," von Bülow :

French and Belgian soldiers must be given up as prisoners of war before 4 o'clock in front of the prison. Citizens who do not obey will be condemned to penal servitude for life in Germany. A rigorous search of buildings will commence at 4 o'clock. Any soldier found will be immediately shot.

Arms, powder, dynamite must be given in at 4 o'clock. Penalty: shooting. Citizens knowing ,of any hiding-place must warn the burgo-master under penalty of penal servitude for life.

All streets will be occupied by a German guard, who will take ten hostages in each street, whom they will keep under observation. Should any disturbance occur in any street the ten hostages will be shot.

Doors must not be locked, and from 8 o'clock at night three windows must be lit up in each house.

It is forbidden to be in the streets after 8 o'clock. . . . &c., &c.

On the 30th of August the following placard, signed by the valiant Burgomaster of Brussels, was posted in the city. You would not ask me to comment upon it.

The Germans replied on the following day with this bilingual placard:

A proclamation, dated Brussels, 2nd of September, 1914, informs the Belgians that:

By the order of the 26th of August, 1914, given at the General Head-quarters of the Army, His Majesty the Emperor of Germany has deigned to appoint as Governor-General in Belgium His Excellency the Field-Marshall Baron von der Goltz, and as chief of the Civil Administration of the Governor-General His Excellency Herr von Sandt.

On the 6th of September, 1914, Major Dieckmann installed. himself in the Château des Bruyères, at Grivegnée, not far from the Fléron fort. He immediately had posted in Grivegnée and several of the neighbouring communes a long proclamation in which are enumerated the offences against German soldiers of which a Belgian civilian can be guilty.

I will reproduce a few of the more typical of the seventeen paragraphs of this monstrous lucubration:

2. All the inhabitants of the occupied houses in the localities of Beyne-Heusay, Grivegnée, Bois-de-Breux, and Fléron must return to their homes by nightfall (at present by 7 p.m. German time). These houses will be lit up as long as anyone is moving about in them. . . . Any resistance against these orders will entail death.

3. The commandant must meet with no difficulty on his domiciliary visits. Persons are requested without notice to show all the rooms of the house. Whosoever opposes this will be severely punished.

6. I shall appoint, from the lists which will be submitted to me (by the burgomasters), those persons who from noon one day to noon the next will have to remain as hostages. If the hostage is not replaced in time he will have to remain a further 24 hours in the fort (of Fléron). After this second period of 24 hours the hostage will incur the death penalty if he is not replaced.

8. I demand that all the civilians going to and fro in my district shall show their deference to German officers by taking off their hat (sic) or lifting the hand to the head as in the military salute. In case of doubt any German soldier should be saluted. Those who do not do so (as required) must expect the German soldiery to make themselves respected by all and any means.

10. Anyone who has knowledge that quanties of petrol, benzine, benzol and other analogous liquids are to be found in a given place . . and who has not declared it to the military commandant, incurs the death penalty.

11. Anyone who does not immediately comply with the order " raise the arms" renders himself guilty (sic) of the death penalty.

14. Anyone who, by the communication of false news which would be of a nature to injure the moral of the German troops, and also anyone who, no matter in what manner, seeks to make preparations inimical to the German Army, renders himself suspect and runs the risk of being shot on the spot.

17. Anyone who, under the protection of the sign of the Swiss Convention, does anything or seeks to do anything prejudicial to the German Army. . . is hanged.

What, to the German mind, is " false news of a nature to injure the moral of the German troops "? Would it not be, more often than otherwise, news that merely contradicts the news which the German leaders provide for their troops, to improve their moral, and which is an accurate representation of fact the truth, in short, as opposed to lies?

On the 16th of September, 1914, a fresh placard from the pen of M. Max appeared upon the walls of Brussels.

A few days later a German placard announced the arrest of this great Belgian citizen, who has since then been imprisoned in Germany, where " he patiently awaits the hour of reparation." Adolphe Max is still ignorant and so are all his compatriots of the precise pretext for this measure; but it seems that his crime must have been that he scrupulously and unfalteringly kept his promise to defend " with all his energies the rights and dignities of his fellow-citizens " against the encroachment of the Germans.

Here is a notice signed, like the preceding, by General von Lüttwitz, " Governor of Brussels," and dated the 22nd of September, 1914:

I remind the population of Brussels and the suburbs that it is strictly forbidden to sell or distribute newspapers which are not expressly permitted by the German Governor.

Infringements will result in the immediate arrest of the vendors, as well as long sentences of imprisonment.

This notice, dated Brussels, the 25th of September, 1914, is from the Governor-General himself:

It has recently happened, in the regions which are not at present occupied by German troops in moderate strength, that convoys of waggons or patrols have been attacked by surprise by the inhabitants.

I call the attention of the public to the fact that a register has been made of towns and communes in whose neighbourhood such attacks have been delivered, and that they will have to expect their punishment as soon as German troops are in their neighbourhood.

On the night of the 25th of September the railway-line and the telegraph were destroyed on the Lovenjoul-Vertryck line. As a result these two localities were obliged, on the morning of the 30th of September, to render themselves accountable and were forced to provide hostages.

In future the localities nearest to the spot where such things have been done it does not matter whether they are guilty of complicity or not will be punished without mercy. To this end hostages have been taken from all localities in the neighbourhood of railways menaced by such at-tacks, and at the first attempt to destroy the railways or telegraph or telephone wires they will immediately be shot.

Moreover, all troops entrusted with the protection of the railways have received orders to shoot any person approaching the railways or telegraph or telephone lines in a suspicious manner.

The Field-Marshal must certainly have been aware that these attacks upon German convoys or patrols, and this destruction of (Belgian) railways or (Belgian) telegraph lines, was the work

of (Belgian) soldiers defending their country as best they could. But as it asserted at the outset, through one of its leaders, the German Army wanted an " open road," and the " Governor-General in Belgium," who had to see that it got this " open road," did not hesitate, with this end in view, to employ any means which he considered opportune, even to blackmail. All means, even the most infamous, the most profoundly disgraceful, were good in the eyes of the high military authorities of Germany, so long as they tended toward the supreme goal: the victory of Germany. " To employ without mitigation the means of defence and intimidation is not only the right, but the duty of every army commander," says the Kriegsbrauch im Landkriege, treating of the relations between the army occupying a given territory and the inhabitants of that territory.

Here is another order of Field-Marshal von der Goltz's, which tends to hamper and paralyse the defensive; it is dated the 7th of October, 1914:

In that portion of the country occupied by the German troops the Belgian Government has succeeded in forwarding to the militia of several classes orders to join the army.

These Belgian orders are not valid. Only the orders of the German Government and of the authorities subordinated thereto are valid in the above portion of the country.

All those who receive Belgian orders are strictly forbidden to carry them out.

In future militiamen must not leave their present place of residence (town or commune) without being specially authorised so to do by the German Administration.

In case of disobedience the family of the militiaman will be held equally responsible.

Militiamen in possession of an order to join or a medal of registration

will be treated as prisoners of war.

On the 13th of October, 1914, von der Goltz renewed and added further details to the prohibition, which had already been several times published, to sell or circulate newspapers or other " products of the printing-press " not passed by the censor.

All products of the printing-press, as well as all other written reproductions or pictures with or without descriptions, and musical compositions with text or commentary (printed) obtained by mechanical or chemical process and intended for distribution, are, subject to the censorship of the General Imperial German Government (Civil Administration).

Whosoever shall have fabricated or distributed printed matter as indicated in paragraph i without the permission of the censor will be punished in conformity with martial law. The printed matter will be confiscated and the plates and clichés destined for reproduction will be rendered useless.

The placarding, exhibition or exposure of printed matter prohibited by the present decree in places where the public is able to take note of it is also regarded as distribution.

Von der Goltz Pasha left for Constantinople. General von Bissing, his successor, applied himself to consolidating the German domination. The mailed fist grew yet heavier.

Here is the text of one of the first proclamations (Brussels, the 4th of January, 1915) of the new Governor-General:

The public is reminded that in those portions of Belgium subject to the German Government, and since the day this Government was instituted, only the orders of the Governor-General and the authorities subordinate to him have the force of law.

The decrees issued since this date or yet to be issued by the King of the Belgians and the Belgian Ministers have no legal force in the domain of the German Government in Belgium. I have determined to ensure by all the means at my disposal that Governmental powers shall be exercised exclusively by the German authorities instituted in Belgium. I expect the Belgian officials, in the admitted interests of the country, not to refuse to continue in the exercise of their functions, above all as I shall not require of them services directly benefiting the German Army.

Salaries which are paid by the late Belgian authorities unknown to or contrary to the will of the German Government to Belgian officials are liable to confiscation.

General von Bissing also endeavours by all means in his power to prevent young Belgians of an age to bear arms (50) from crossing the Dutch frontier in order to enrol themselves in what he called the " enemy army." Belgium literally became " a vast Prussian prison " (52). Read this notice of the 26th of January:

Persons capable of military service have lately attempted on various occasions to cross the Dutch frontier in secret in order to join the enemy army.

Consequently I decide as follows:

1. All privileges in force as regards circulation in the regions bordering on the frontier are suppressed in the case of Belgians capable of military service.

2. Belgians who attempt, in spite of prohibition, to cross the frontier to Holland run the risk of being killed by the sentinels on the frontier.

Belgians capable of military service captured under such circumstances will be punished and sent to Germany as prisoners of war.

This applies equally to members of the family of any Belgian capable of military service as above who do not prevent the latter from entering Holland.

4. All Belgians of male sex aged from sixteen to forty years are regarded as capable of military service within the meaning of this decree.

Not content with preventing Belgians from serving their country, the German authorities use all means in their power to force them to betray it by serving the interests of the German Army. Here, in this connection, is a very characteristic notice, dated from Gand, on the 10th of June, 1915, and signed by Lieut.-General von Westarp :

By order of His Excellency the Inspector of the Station (Etape), I bring the following to the notice of the communes :

The attitude of several factories, which, under the pretext of patriotism, and relying on The Hague Convention, have refused to work for the German Army, proves that there are tendencies among the population which aim at placing difficulties in the way of the Administration of the German Army.

In this connection I make it known that I shall employ every means at my disposal in order to repress such underhand behaviour, which can only disturb the good understanding hitherto existing between the Administration of the German Army and the population.

In the first place I make the communal authorities responsible for the spread of such tendencies, and I call attention to the fact that the population itself will cause the liberties hitherto accorded in the most generous manner to be withdrawn and replaced by restrictive measures necessitated by its own offence.

I will not lay stress upon the graceful manner in which this von Westarp deals with Belgian patriotism and international conventions; but I cannot refrain from remarking that he truly exaggerates when he boasts of the " liberties accorded in the most generous fashion " to the Belgian population, and that he goes altogether astray when he brags of the good understanding existing between this population and the Administration of the German Army.

Here, by the way, is one among many decrees which is significant of the " liberties so generously accorded " :

Whosoever wears, exposes, or displays in public, in a provocative manner, the Belgian colours, or whosoever wears, exposes, or displays in public, even in a non-provocative manner, the colours of other countries at war with Germany and her Allies, is liable to a maximum fine of 600 marks, or a maximum sentence of six months' imprisonment. These two penalties may also be combined. Offenders will be tried by the German authorities or military courts.

The present decree will enter into force on the 1st of July, 1915.

On the 1st of July that is, three weeks before the national festival ! Von Bissing (for the decree was his) realised that " to govern is to foresee " !

Here is something that will afford a still better idea of the aforesaid liberties: A decree posted on the walls of Menin (in West Flanders, ten miles to the east-south-east of Ypres) contains the following:

From today the town can no longer grant relief of whatever kind, even for families, women and children except to those workers who are working regularly upon military work, and other prescribed tasks. All other workers and their families cannot henceforth be relieved in any way whatever.

Decrees of the Governor-General, dated the 14th and 15th of August, 1915, generalise and extend to the whole of the occupied territory the measures intended to ensure the execution of " works of public interest " (for which read: of military German—interest), while others refer to " the strikers who through idleness refrain from work."

Of the same order is the following decree, applicable to the region of étapes (Flanders, East and West, and a portion of Hainault) . It was issued in Gand, on the 12th of October, 1915, by Lieutenant-General von Unger, Etappeninspektor:

Art. 1. Whosoever, without pretext, shall refuse to undertake or continue work in conformity with his calling and in the execution of which the Military Administration is interested, work ordered by one or more military commandants, will be liable to a maximum term of one year's correctional imprisonment. He may also be deported to Germany.

The fact of invoking Belgian laws to the contrary, or even international conventions, can in no case justify the refusal to work.

As to the lawfulness of the work required, the military commandant alone has the right to form a decision.

Art. 2. Whosoever by constraint, threats, persuasion, or any other means attempts to induce another person to refuse to work as indicated in Art. 1, is liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than five years.

Art. 3. Whosoever shall knowingly, by relief or other means, facilitate the punishable refusal to work, will be liable to a fine which may amount to as much as 10,000 marks; he may in addition be condemned to one year's imprisonment. If communes or societies have rendered themselves guilty of such an offence the heads of the same will be punished in consequence.

Art. 4.-Independently of the penalties threatened in articles i and 3, the German authorities may in case of need impose upon those communes in which the execution of a piece of work has been groundlessly refused a contribution or other coercive police measures.

The present decree enters into force immediately.

This is forced labour, slavery, naked and unashamed. Worse than this: it is treason rendered compulsory by means of an infamous blackmail, and in contempt of all international conven-

tions. We have reached the zenith of illegality: one could go no further.

WAR CONTRIBUTIONS

Provinces and communes were burdened with formidable war contributions. Figures have been cited which one hesitates to believe correct, so exorbitant are they.

Of the following figures, however, we may be certain, since we find them in the official documents:

Brussels, £2,000,000; Antwerp, £2,000,000; province of Brabant, £18,000,000; Namur and seventeen surrounding communes, £1,280,000.

We read in the report of the interview at which the conditions of the entry of the Germans into Brussels were discussed: " Captain Kriegsheim required the city of Brussels and the communes of the district of Brussels (agglomération) to pay within three days, as a war contribution, a sum of 5o million francs, in gold, silver, or banknotes, the province of Brabant having to pay, in addition, as a war contribution, a sum of 450 millions of francs, which sum was payable by the 1st of September at latest."

And in the report of the College of the Burgomasters and Sheriffs of the City of Antwerp we read: " Despite our repeated efforts, a war contribution of 50 millions of francs imposed on the city independently of the daily requisitions, the burden of which is very great."

As for the figure mentioned in the case, of Namur (£1,280,000), it is given in the 11th Report of the Commission of Inquiry.

M. Max obtained, subsequently, both an indispensable postponement and the reduction of the contribution imposed on the city and district of Brussels to £1,800,000.

I think, if my memory serves me, that Liége, like Brussels and Antwerp, had to pay £2,000,000.

As for the £i8,000,000 at first demanded of the province of Brabant, it was materially impossible for this single province (containing only I,500,000 inhabitants) to pay it. The German Administration finally realised this fact, and it was under these circumstances that von Bissing, on the loth of December, 1914, issued the following decree:

A war contribution of the amount of £1,600,000, to be paid monthly for one year, is imposed upon the population of Belgium.

The payment of these amounts is imposed upon the nine provinces, which are regarded as joint debitors.

The two first monthly payments are to be made by the 15th of January, 1915, at latest, and the following monthly payments by the loth of each following month, to the military chest of the field army of the General Imperial Government in Brussels.

If the provinces are obliged to resort to the issue of stock with a view to procuring the necessary funds, the form and terms of these shares will be determined by the Commissary-General for the banks in Belgium.

The Provincial Councils having been convoked by the German authorities to determine the mode of payment of this war contribution, the Vice-President of one of these assemblies declared:

" The Germans demand these 480 million francs of the country without right and without reason. Are we to sanction this enormous war-tax? If we listened only to our hearts we should reply: No, 480 million times no; because our hearts would tell us: We were a small, honest nation; living happily by its free labour! We were a small, honest nation, having faith in treaties and believing in honour. We were a nation unarmed, but full of confidence, when Germany suddenly hurled two mil-lion men upon our frontiers, the most brutal army that the world has ever seen, and said to us: Betray the promise you have given. Let my armies go by that I may crush France, and I will give you gold.

" Belgium replied: Keep your gold; I prefer to die rather than live without honour. . . .

" The German Army has therefore crushed our country in contempt of solemn treaties. ` It is an injustice,' said the Chancellor of the German Empire. ' The position of Germany has forced us to commit it. But we will repair the wrong we have done to Belgium by the passage of our armies.'

" They want to repair this injustice as follows : Belgium will pay Germany 48o million francs ! Give this proposal your vote !

" When Galileo had discovered the fact that the earth moved round the sun, he was forced, at the foot of the stake, to abjure his error. But he murmured: Nevertheless, it moves! Well, gentlemen, as I fear a still greater misfortune for my country, I consent to the payment of these 480 millions . . . and I cry: Nevertheless, it moves! Long live our country, in spite ofall! "

A year had elapsed, and the 480 millions had been punctually paid, when von Bissing issued a fresh order:

In virtue of Article 49 of The Hague Convention relating to the Laws and Usages of War on Land, there will henceforth be imposed, until further notice, upon the Belgian population, a monthly war contribution of 40 millions of francs, in order to contribute to the expenses of the army and the administration of the occupied territories.

The Administration reserves the right to levy the monthly payments wholly or partly in German money at the rate of 8o marks for too francs. The obligation of this payment is incumbent on the nine provinces of Belgium, which assume the responsibility of the sum due as joint debitors.

The payment of the first monthly instalment must take place by the loth of December, 1915, at latest, and that of succeeding instalments by the loth of each month at latest, to the military chest of the General Imperial Government in Brussels. If the provinces issue stock in order to procure the resources necessary for payment, the Imperial Commissary-General of the Belgian banks will fix the form and the terms of the said stock.

Germany appealing to The Hague Conventions: there, to say the least of it, is an unlooked-for spectacle ! But let us see what is the wording of this Article 49, which von Bissing invokes for his own purposes. Here it is:

If, in addition to the taxes mentioned in the above Article, the occupant levies other money contributions in the occupied territory, they shall only be applied to the needs of the army or of the administration of the territory in question.

As for the preceding Article, it says :

If, in the territory occupied, the occupant collects the taxes, dues and tolls payable to the State, he shall do so, as far as is possible, in accordance with the legal basis and assessment in force at the time, and shall in consequence be bound to defray the expenses of the administration of the occupied territory to the saine extent as the national Government had been so bound.

Now 40 million francs per month, or 480 millions per annum, is more than six times the amount of the direct taxes lately collected by the Belgian State taxes which the German Administration, moreover, is collecting on its own account into the bar-gain. Four hundred and eighty millions of francs is five times as great as the ordinary expenditure of our War Department.

But in Germany they find that it is still insufficient ! Is this because they consider that this sum, Iarge as it is, is not sufficient for " the needs of the army and of the administration " of the occupied territory? Who would be so simple as to believe this? No, the fact is and no one is ignorant of it, even in Germany that by virtue of the principles with which the German Army and public are imbued, a great portion of this good Belgian money goes out of Belgium.

The Vossische Zeitung feels impelled to explain to its readers that " the new monthly contribution of 40 millions corresponds to Belgium's capacity payment," which means does it not? that this is all that could be demanded of her. The worthy newspaper adds elsewhere: " Experts have expressed the opinion that Belgium has lost, since the war, a sixth of her national wealth; Belgian industry is paralysed for lack of raw materials and means of export. The number of the unemployed and indigent is considerable. The exploitation of the mines and the alimentary industry alone yields a certain profit. Under these conditions one cannot demand a greater sacrifice from the nine occupied provinces."

PILLAGE

On the 17th of January, 1915, one might read, on the walls of the good city of Brussels, a notice issued by the German military authorities, in which it was stated:

The present events of this war prove that no army in the world has given proof of a spirit so ideally military, of so high a culture, and of a discipline so severe, as our Army; that nowhere are the laws of war which forbid theft, murder, and pillage, and the removal of the goods of others, respected with such sincerity and such rigour as in the German Army.

An impudent lie, if ever such was!

At Visé, Aerschot, Andenne, Namur, Dinant, Louvain, Termonde, and many another town, and in numbers of villages the Germans proceeded to devote themselves to a systematic pillage from the moment of their arrival.

At Louvain the pillage began on Tuesday the 27th of August, 1914, and lasted a week. In bands of six or eight, the soldiers burst open the doors, smashed the windows, ransacked the drawers, cupboards, etc., broken open the safes (48), stealing money, pictures, curios, silver, linen, clothing, wines, and food.

Whole suites of furniture were packed and sent to the railway stations in military baggage waggons, thence to be despatched into Germany.

" At Aerschot," says M. Orts, Councillor of Legation, in the 4th Report of the Commission of Inquiry, for three weeks the Germans were gradually emptying practically the whole of the houses in the town, everywhere destroying articles which did not satisfy their cupidity, while the officers kept the wealthier dwellings for themselves. All securities which the owners had had no time to place in safety, silver, family jewels, and money have disappeared; incendiarism often had no other object than to efface the proofs of particularly extensive thefts. Baggage waggons laden with booty set out from Aerschot in the direction of the Meuse. . . ."

At Namur a large number of houses were sacked. The funds of a private bank, the " Banque Générale Belge," were seized. In a number of houses where officers had lodged all the furniture was broken, and the wine, the linen, and even the women's clothing was stolen. A citizen of Namur saw the furniture of his country house going by on German waggons. Another had 17,000 francs' worth of securities taken from his safe.

At Dinant all the safes were opened by means of oxy-hydrogen blow-pipes brought for the purpose; before they were burned, all the houses were methodically emptied.

" To my house," writes the State Attorney, M. Tschoffen, " they came with waggons to remove the silver, the bedding, the furniture, the clothing (men's and women's), the linen, the knick-knacks, the mantelpiece ornaments, a collection of weapons from the Congo, the pictures, the wines, and even my decorations, and those of my father and grandfather. . . From the cellars of a wine-merchant, M. Piret, 60,000 bottles were stolen. There is not, to my knowledge, in the houses left standing a single safe which has not been forced or which does not bear manifest traces of burglarious attempts !

At Andenne the wine-cellars were all emptied (96) and the drapers' shops were sacked; wines, liquers, sheets, stuffs, etc., were taken away on motor-waggons.

On entering Hasselt the Germans stole 2,075,000 francs from the branch of the " National Bank," which is really a private undertaking.

At Liége they seized 4,000,000 francs in the same manner. Then, finding in the bank some new 5-franc notes which had not yet been signed, they went to the printer and forced him to add the missing facsimile signature.

At Louvain they appropriated the funds of the " Banque de la Dyle " and those of the " Banque populaire."

At Termonde, on the 4th of September, 1914, a special gang entered the " Banque Centrale de la Dendre." In the office of the deputy-president they blew open a small safe, from which they removed a sum of 2,100 francs; then they attempted but in vain to force an entrance to the vaults where the safes of private persons were kept.

At Termonde, again, the shop of Van den Durpel, a jeweller, was plundered, as well as a number of private houses.

At Tongres the shops in the Rue de Maestricht were nearly all plundered; wines, stuffs, and goods of all kinds were carried off.

And it was the same in very many other places.

The Germans also stole the valuables from a number of churches. And whenever they could they possessed themselves of the contents of the post-office and railway-station safes.

In many parts of the country château and villas were methodically pillaged and completely emptied of all their furniture.

Country people were despoiled of all they possessed.

" I had placed in a trunk all our family silver, and a silver Christ, as well as our jewels, and I had had this trunk placed in the wine-cellar," says Mlle. Diriex de Tenham, of Surice. "The Germans carried off the wine, the trunk, and all else that they fancied. . . . The pillage of all the houses, which began on Tuesday night, continued all through Wednesday. I have learned since that Mme. Laurent-Mineur's safe (she is a widow) was dynamited, and the silver plate which it contained all twisted out of shape; it was carried off, and so were the shares and securities, some of which were found, half-burned, on a stone not far away."

Do not imagine that these offences were committed only by common soldiers and non-commissioned officers. On the 23rd of August, 1914, a general, three colonels, and six majors installed themselves in the Château de Villers-Saint-Amand, near Ligne (Hainault), and, " guarded by a large number of soldiers," says the owner of the château, M. Delacroix, advocate in the Court of Appeal, " they gave themselves up to veritable acts of vandalism." I have before me the inventory of their depredations and their plunder, drawn up by M. Delacroix himself, and I cite, from among many others, these few items: " 1,500 bottles of wine, 1 carriage, 3 bicycles, 3 gold watches, 1 typewriter."

The Hospital of Saint Thomas at Louvain possessed a fine motor-car, quite new, a 40-h.p. model, which had been presented to it at the beginning of hostilities by M. Léon David (foully assassinated on the infernal night of the 25th of August, 1914). On the 4th of September a German army doctor, who had noticed this fine motor-car, begged the loan of it " to visit the wounded at Aerschot." The motor-car did not return to Louvain. Questioned on the subject, the German doctor excused himself by saying that a superior officer had taken a fancy to it and appropriated it. (The number of motor-cars stolen by the Germans in Belgium is, by the way, considerable.)

But here is something better still: After staying for a week in a château in the Liége district, His Imperial Highness Prince Eitel Fritz, the Duke of Brunswick, and a third person of less importance, had all the dresses which were found in the ward-robes packed under their own supervision, in order that they might be sent to Germany. The châtelaine and her daughters were famed for the richness of their toilettes.'

IN A BELGIAN CHATEAU

We must do the German officers the justice to admit that it was often for their wives that they committed these thefts; they sent them, from Belgium, dresses, laces, furs, jewels, pianos, and even sewing-machines. " A motor-car arrived at the hospital," wrote the soldier Johannes Thode (4th Reserve-Ersatz-Regiment) in his service note-book-he was then under treatment in Brussels. " It brought some war booty (Kriegsbeute) : a piano, two sewing-machines, a number of albums, and all sorts of other things."

Sewing-machines as " war booty "! Is it not pitiful?

Pianos are greatly in demand among the ladies of Germany. Here is an example : A German officer left a letter from his wife in a drawer in one of the rooms of a château in which he had been lodging. In this letter occurred the passage : " A thousand thanks for the beautiful things you have sent me. The furs were magnificent. The tulip-wood furniture is exquisite; but do not forget that Elsa is still waiting for her piano."

Hundreds of pianos have been sent from Belgium by the Germans. Elsa may well have had hers by now. Perhaps she even came to choose it for herself, and profited by the occasion to take way a few fine dresses, for not a few German women have made the journey to Belgium in order to assist their men-folk to choose and pack their " war booty."

Once the pillaging of a town or village had been begun the Germans destroyed or spoiled or soiled what they could not take away.

" Although Aerschot was only partially destroyed by fire, it was sacked in its entirety," says M. Orts in his report; he visited the unfortunate little town after the second sortie from the en-trenched camp of Antwerp. " I went into several houses, chosen at random, and I went through the different storeys of these houses; while through broken doors and windows I looked into a number of others. Everywhere the furniture was in con-fusion, broken open, or defiled in an obscene manner; the wallpapers were hanging in strips from the walls; the doors of the cellars were burst open; wardrobes, chests of drawers, and cup-, boards of all kinds had been opened and emptied of their con-tents. Linen and the most miscellaneous articles covered the ground, as well as an incredible number of empty bottles.

" In the more wealthy houses the pictures were cut to pieces, and other works of art were smashed. On the door of one of these houses, a very large and handsome building belonging to Dr. X , one may still read the following half-effaced inscription, written with chalk: Bitte dieses Haus zu schonen, da wirklich friedliche gute Leute. . . . (S) Bannach, Wachtmeister. (Please protect this house, here really peaceful, honest people. . . .) I entered this house. I was told it had been inhabited by some officers, and that the solicitude of one of them appeared to have saved it from the general devastation. On the very threshold a stale odour of spilt wine drew the attention to the hundreds of empty bottles which littered the hall, the staircase, and even the courtyard giving access to the garden. In the rooms an indescribable disorder prevailed; I was treading on a layer of torn clothing, and flockers of wool escaped from ripped-up mattresses, and everywhere were gaping wardrobes or chests of drawers, while in every room, within reach of the bed, were yet more empty bottles.

The dining-room was littered with them ; dozens of wine-glasses covered the dinner-table and smaller tables, which were surrounded by tattered sofas and armchairs, while in a corner of the room a piano, with a smutty keyboard, had apparently had the front kicked in. Everything went to prove that" these rooms had been the scene, for many days and nights, of disgusting drunkenness and debauchery. In the market-place the house of M. X , the notary, offered a similar spectacle, and, according to what I was told by a sergeant of gendarmes who was endeavouring with his men to bring a little order into all this chaos, it is the same with most of the houses belonging to the more prominent families, in which the German officers had elected to quarter themselves."

How many other examples of such depredations I could cite ! Here is one among many:

" At Lierre the Germans plundered the studio of Isidore Opsomer. 'On my pictures they painted in large letters: Deutschland, Deutschland über alles! (51) . They amused them-selves by slitting canvases, tearing up my etchings, photographs, and documents, and breaking my antiquities,' wrote the unfortunate artist, some time later, to one of his friends."

The inscription found by M. Orts on the house of an Aerschot doctor, and others, sometimes briefer, such as that to be seen in the above photograph, prove plainly that pillage forms an integral part of the German methods of warfare. Nicht plündern —that is to say, " You are permitted or ordered to pillage everywhere but here."

Ordered? Yes, precisely; the Mother Superior of a convent near a village which had been plundered received a visit from a German non-commissioned officer and a soldier, who gave her, the first a watch, chain, and bracelet of gold, and the second a small sum of money, saying that, although pillage was imposed upon them, they at least did not wish to profit by it, not being thieves.

Yes; pillage is a military operation a part of German warfare! it is a veritable form of organised brigandage raised to the level of a national institution; but do not imagine that it ceased after the first few days of the occupation! Far from it!

A Norwegian engineer, who was attached, with other foreigners, to a great factory in the suburbs of Brussels, and who remained there until December, 1914, told me that the German officers who had for some time been billeted in the factory used often to set out in the morning with empty portmanteaux. When they returned in the evening these were stuffed with laces and valuable bibelots which these gentry, who were extremely proud of their exploits, used to display, complacently, before the eyes of their hosts, who were flabbergasted by such cynicism. " And you," I asked my informant an absolutely honourable man, whose statements could not be questioned—" did they steal nothing from you?" " Not much; when they finally left us they contented themselves with taking the best of our boots! "

Krieg ist Krieg!

REQUISITIONS

Article 52 of The Hague Convention says:

Requisitions in kind and services shall not be demanded from local authorities or inhabitants except for the needs of the army of occupation. They shall be in proportion to the resources of the country, and of such a nature as not to involve the inhabitants in the obligation of taking part in military operations against their own country. . .

Contributions in kind shall as far as possible be paid for in ready money : if not, a receipt shall be given and the payment of the amount due shall be made as soon as possible.

These regulations like nearly all the others have been absolutely ignored by our enemies.

When they entered a Belgian town or village the German troops proceeded to demand enormous requisitions of provisions, forage, wines, liquers, and tobaccos. These contributions in kind were very rarely paid for in money; as a rule, the Germans confined themselves to giving in exchange valueless scraps of paper, or vouchers payable in Berlin, or even the height of impudence !—in Paris.

I could not if I wished tell the whole tale of these exactions here. I will confine myself to a few hints.

On their arrival in Brussels the Germans requisitioned enormous quantities of provisions. " It is obvious," writes a jurist who remained in the capital, " that these were not intended for consumption on the spot by the army of occupation, but that they were destined to maintain enormous armies of invasion for a certain length of time. . . . Everybody saw these provisions being packed; everybody remembers their significant destination. On the other hand, it is certain that these requisitions were not in proportion to the resources of the city, whose population was seriously threatened by famine after this infliction."

In Antwerp, not content with seizing enormous stores of cereals as war booty, the Germans demanded, month after month, that the commune should provide daily for every man of the garrison and it sometimes numbered 20,000-750 grammes of bread, 800 grammes of meat, 780 grammes of potatoes; vegetables, coffee, sugar, cheese; half a bottle of wine, 5 cigars, 15 cigarettes, and l00 grammes of tobacco.

" Every day," wrote the correspondent of the Amsterdam Handelsblad, from L'Ecluse, in December, 1914, " every day a score of officers come hustling into the Hotel de Ville of Gand in order to make their requisitions. The finest stoves are seized for use in the German trenches. They ask for everythnig fruit, coffee, tea, cheese, clothing. One officer even demanded wristlet watches, but the communal administration kicked against such a demand, and the officer did not insist."

At Gand, one day, some soldiers presented a distiller with a requisition voucher for 800 bottles of cognac. Having glanced at the paper our distiller requested the Germans to ask their officer if there was not some mistake. They returned with a demand for the delivery of 1,600 bottles!

" At Ostend," writes the correspondent quoted above, " the situation is extremely critical. There is practically no more flour; the bread is extremely bad, there is no petrol; cheese costs 4 francs the kilo, and the livre of coffee costs 2fr.50. The gas-works have ceased operations owing to a lack of coal. In the cafés, of which some are lit with candles, one sees only German soldiers."

The cause of this penury was the demands of the Germans. And it was of no use to employ ruses or expedients to evade these demands. " At Ostend, as the wine destined for our troops had become scarce, we decided to ransack the cellars," we read in Die Woche for the 6th of March, 1915. " Very soon we obtained a splendid prize. We discovered 40,000 bottles which had been walled up."

Famous for their Burgundies, the cellars of Walloma were, we surmise, very largely depleted.

At Charleroi, on the 18th of November, 1914, the Kreigshauptmann ordered the inhabitants " to draw up a list of all the wines which they had in their cellars, indicating the number of barrels and bottles of the different vintages," and he added in his " Notice " that these wines, which were to be " reserved for the consumption of the field army " you understand, the field army must not be removed without his authorisation.

At Tournai (36,000 inhabitants) 110,000 bottles of wine had to be provided at Christmas as an " extra." The Kaiser is so generous!

I have given a few examples of what happened in the towns. In the country matters were much worse.

M. Hans, correspondent of the Amsterdam Telegraaf, wrote from L'Ecluse, on the 8th of January, 1915 : " On the maison communale of the little village of Middelburg, which contains only 850 inhabitants, a notice was pasted containing the list of all that had to be provided within a period of six weeks: t00 fat hogs, 100,000 kilos of wheat or rye, 50,000 kilos of beans or peas, 50,000 kilos of oats, and 150,000 kilos of straw.' Now Middelburg has already provided the great army which is fighting for civilisation and justice with 50 cows, 35 hogs, 100 fowls, 1,600 kilos of oats and 1,600 kilos of straw."

At the same period an inhabitant of a little commune of the Campine wrote :—" Every day brings us fresh demands for hay, straw, oats, cattle, petrol, coal, etc. And what fresh vexatious regulations ! "

From another small village in Flanders a frontier village of 1,200 inhabitants a reliable person, an acquaintance of mine, wrote in February, 1915, to his brother, a refugee in a Scandinavian country:

" They loudly declare that they do not requisition either young animals or cows in calf. But the officers tell their men on the quiet that they must not take any notice of the protests of the peasants, so that among the 150 beasts which they took here yesterday there were a great many cows in calf and young calves. In this way we shall soon be without anything: butter, milk, meat; in this way, moreover, our agricultural industry is threatened with complete ruin. . . . Then they say that they pay! Yes, they give `vouchers,' but when one wants to get the amount settled one is sent from Herod to Pilate, and one day one has called too soon, and another day too late.

" It is the Germans who, by their odious behaviour, are driving numbers of volunteers to leave the country. Despite all sorts of difficulties, and in spite of the risk of being shot on the spot by the sentries, they are still crossing the frontier every day in order to enrol themselves in the ranks of our valiant army. . . ."

Here, finally, are some extracts from a letter written in the Walloon country :

" The German occupation is oppressing us, pillaging our possessions, stealing from us, meddling with the whole of our public life and, above all, with our private life and thrusting itself everywhere. Having taken our linen, they requisitioned the mattresses; then the blankets, leaving only two for each occupied bed and one has to prove that the bed is occupied. Now they are scouring our Namur countryside in order to take everything that is made of brass or copper, in order to make cartridge-cases and shell-fuses; saucepans, door-handles, curtain-rings, brass bed-steads, chandeliers everything is taken everything and, naturally, nothing is paid for. The woods, too, are ravaged by poor people without coal . . . and very soon without bread. . . .

" From the farmers in our district they have taken nearly all their horses, cattle, swine, fowls, carts, harness, forage, grain, etc., for which they give vouchers, but these vouchers will assuredly never be paid. From Farmer F alone they have taken stock to the value of more than 40,000 francs; from V___(whose farm is one of 270 acres) the value of 60,000 francs; from G, nearly 30,000.

" All the stud horses of which we were so proud have gone to Germany. Now the horned cattle are following the same road. There are poor, respectable people, refugees by the thou-sand, who had everything they possessed stolen or burned, and we no longer know what we are to do to help them. . . .

" Nevertheless, our confidence remains untouched and absolute. . . ."

As the writer of this letter very truly remarks, we were extremely proud of our heavy draught horses, and we had reason to be. Look at the portrait of " Rêve d'Or," that superb stallion who, in 1900, in Paris, was proclaimed the champion of the world, and whose glorious perfection did so much to establish, once for all, the superiority of the Belgian breed. It was a breed essentially national, its qualities resulting not from such or such a cross, but from a judicious and severe selection of native stud-horses.

We used to sell these admirable horses to Holland, the Scandinavian countries, Germany, Russia, Italy, and even the United States and Canada; we sold them for good gold, and this trade, which was increasing from year to year, brought us in an annual average of £2,000,000.

The Germans, and particularly the farmers of the Prussian Rhineland, were our most assiduous customers. Every year, at the same season, our best stables were visited by German horse-dealers, and notably by a certain Karl M—, an eminent expert, with the manners of a good fellow, wholly gemütlich, who quickly became extremely popular in the horse-breeding world. Now during the early days of the invasion a number of our great farms were visited one by one by grey motor-cars preceded by an armoured motor-car provided with machine-guns from which alighted the said Karl M , clad, this time, in the uniform of a cavalry officer, and a whole band of . . . collaborators, who, with the audacity of bandits armed to the teeth, who are confident in advance of impunity, seized upon the finest of these famous horses.

Other officers operated in other localities, sometimes indicating by name the horses which they wished to take !

In the majority of cases no requisition voucher was given, or if they gave such vouchers these were, as a rule, irregular vouchers bearing neither a description of the horse, nor mention of the price, nor seals, nor signatures. These worthy officers even profited, at times, by their victims' ignorance of the German language by adding irony or worse to spoliation. One farmer, from whom two beautiful horses were taken, received a voucher for " two rabbits "; another was given a voucher for " cuts with a whip "; some vouchers bear the words " payable in Paris," or even " payable by the French Republic." In a certain locality in Limburg some brutes burned in his stable a stallion worth £z,000, forcing the farmer, his wife, and his children, kneeling, with raised hands, to witness this horrible spectacle. Elsewhere officers and soldiers amused themselves by killing horses grazing in the fields with shots from their rifles or revolvers.

This was during the period of invasion.

From the beginning of October, 1914, competent officials came expressly from Germany to organise systematic raids, fallaciously described by them as " cash purchases." Their official label was " The Commission for the Purchase of Horses "; and these gentry used to inform the farmers, by means of placards that they would sit, on such or such a date, at such or such a place, where all horses, as well as yearling foals, must be brought before them under penalty of confiscation, and even of a fine into the bargain. The " Commission " then retained the best horses, while the unwilling vendors who received in exchange nothing better than a requisition voucher were not allowed to fix any prices. In many cases, moreover, the vouchers bore no hint as to the value of the horses. These latter were at once sent to Germany, where they were publicly sold. The German newspapers have on many occasions announced the public auctions of these " booty horses." One such advertisement, which appeared in the Kölnische Zeitung for the 29th of October, 1914, is here reproduced.

The horned cattle were carried off and raided just as the horses were, and here again the finest specimens were sent to Germany.

What are we to say of such spoliation? What are we to say, again, of the felling of beautiful trees notably of a large number of walnut trees, destined to make rifle-stocks at our expense; and of the disappearance of all articles made of brass, copper, or tin plates, chandeliers, and crucifixes, delightful old stuff which, under our grey skies, brought sunshine and joy into the humblest of our farmhouses? I leave the reader to reply.

The Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, of which one cannot pretend that it is hostile to Germany, stated in its issue for the 24th of January, 1915:

" Of the farmers' stores of grain, hay, and straw, and of their stock, they leave nothing. They requisition the stocks of the wholesale and retail merchants as well. It is the same, moreover, all through East Flanders with cotton, linen, cloth, and thread. Goods to the value of millions are requisitioned and paid in vouchers; in the factories raw material intended to last more than three months is seized, and everything that is being manufactured is for Germany too."

The Germans also " requisitioned " great quantities of guano and nitrates in Flanders.

In Antwerp they seized cereals to the value of £720,000; nitrates to the value of £ 16o,000; £240,000 worth of animal and vegetable oils; £400,000 worth of rubber; £800,000 worth of foreign hides; £52,000 worth of cotton, etc., etc.; the value of the merchandise requisitioned merely in the warehouses of our great port amounting to a total of £3,500,000 to X4,000,000.

" Eight hundred thousand pounds is the most that can have been paid," said the President of the Antwerp Chamber of Commerce, in a fully detailed report. " There will, therefore, be at least £2,600,000 still to be paid, or about 80 per cent., of which £2,400,000 represents merchandise for which no price has been fixed."

Everywhere it is the same. The country is being exhausted.

" The requisitions made by the Germans in Belgium," said the same Dutch newspaper, " have lately reached unprecedented proportions. Thus a large manufacturer of Verviers had to furnish £50,000 worth of leather. After this requisition he closed his works, but the Germans demanded that he should resume work, or they would carry off everything. He was therefore forced to resume operations, and is obliged to give the Germans the half of all the leather he prepares. A cloth-maker of Verviers, fearing the same treatment, sent for two thousand poor women, and gave each sufficient cloth to make a cloak."

" Civilians, accompanied and assisted by military detachments, have entered the factories and workshops, selecting and appropriating the machine-tools, many of which have been removed and sent to Germany."

Worse still: the Germans have appropriated whole factories as well as workshops belonging to private persons, and they have even gone so far as to tear up the rails of some of our light railways. Yes, these rails were removed in pairs, still attached to their sleepers, and, loaded on trucks in this condition, they were sent to the Eastern front!

Herr Ludwig Ganghofer, in the Münchner Neueste Nach-richten (No. 103, the 26th of February, 1915), boasts of the organisation of this systematic pillage.

" For three months," he writes, " the occupied country provided four-fifths of the requirements of the army. Even now, although the resources of the occupied country are beginning to yield less abundantly, our Western army still draws from it three-fifths of the necessary subsistence. Germany, therefore, according to a calculation based upon the average, has saved from £175,000 to 1200,000 per diem.

" The profits of victory are still further increased by the profits of the economic war waged conformably with the law of nations (sic) against the conquered territory that is, by the utilisation of the immense resources transported from Belgium and the North of France into Germany: such as war booty, the stores of fortresses, cereals, woollens, metals, timber. What Germany is saving or gaining by this economic war, which is directed with commercial intelligence, may be estimated at £240,000 to £280,000 per diem, and the total profit which Germany has reaped behind the Western front from the operations undertaken since the beginning of the war must be something like £80,000,000."

And this Ludwig Ganghofer adds, without shame:

" An officer of high rank remarked to me at Saint-Quentin, half-jesting, half-thoughtful : ` Astonishing what a man can learn. In reality I am an officer of the Bodyguard at Potsdam, but now I am dealing in timber and wool. And am even making a good thing of it! ' "

EXTORTION AND SPOLIATION

The Military Interpreter for Use in the Enemy's Country," published in Berlin in 1906, describes in meticulous fashion the régime to be imposed upon the populations of occupied territories. Everything has been foreseen by this little manual, which must certainly have served as a guide • on many occasions to German officers operating in Belgium.

" One means of obtaining money is the fine," is one notable statement. " Every commune being, in principle, declared liable for the acts of hostility or malevolence committed upon its territory . . . the slightest injury may be the occasion of a fine."

This " means of obtaining money " was applied in Belgium under the most various pretexts, and with much energy.

At Arlon, on the eleventh day of occupation, a telephone wire having been broken, the town was given four hours to pay a fine of 100,000 francs in gold, in default of which 100 houses would be sacked. When the payment was made 47 houses had already been pillaged !

Moreover, the German authorities held no inquiry into the breaking of this wire; this would have been to look a gift horse in the mouth ! But in Brussels, where a similar incident had occurred, M. Max, confronted by the reprisals with which the city had been threatened, demanded that an inquiry should be held, and it was thereby discvered that the wire in question put up by the Germans to connect two of their posts was absolutely worn out and had broken spontaneously!

At Hargimont, a village in Belgian Luxemburg, some officers quartered themselves in the presbytery. They were finishing a savoury meal when a lively volleying was heard. All leapt to their feet, and their leader declared: " My men have been fired 0n, Monsieur le Curé ! You are my prisoner; I must have ten hostages, and, in two hours, a sum of 100,000 francs!"

In vain did the curé protest the innocence of his parishioners. He was met always by these words: " We must have i 00,000 francs ! "

The châtelaine of the district, who was the only person in a position to find such a sum, was forced to intervene and to sign a cheque upon a Brussels bank. Now the truth was this : it was a drunken soldier who had fired in the air, and his comrades, believing themselves to be attacked, had immediately begun to fire in all directions, even killing (but that was a detail !) the burgomaster, who was passing, leading the horses which had been requisitioned.

At Wavre, a small town in Brabant, a German soldier was wounded by a bullet. The commune (containing barely 8,000 inhabitants) was punished with a fine of three million francs-£120,000! A few days later Lieutenant-General von Nieber wrote to the burgomaster:

On the 22nd of August, 1914, the General commanding the IInd Army, Herr von Bülow, imposed upon the town of Wavre a war contribution of three million francs, payable by the 1st of September, in expiation of (its) unqualifiable conduct, contrary to the law of nations and the usages of war, in attacking German troops by surprise.

The General commanding the IInd Army Corps has given the General commanding the étape of the IInd Army the order to obtain the said contribution without delay, which it (sic) must pay on account of its conduct.

I order and summon you to hand to the bearer of the present the two first instalments or two million francs (£80,000) in gold.

I demand also that you give to the bearer a letter duly sealed with the seal of the town declaring that the balance, or one million francs, will be paid without any default on the 1st of September.

I draw the attention of the town that it cannot in any case count upon a prolongation of the term of delay, for the civil population of the town has placed itself outside the law of nations (sic) by firing on German soldiers.

The town of Wavre will be burned and destroyed if the payment is not made in time, without regard for anyone; the innocent will suffer with the guilty.

The unhappy little city not having been able to pay this exorbitant fine in time, fifty houses were burned down. A few days later a German bullet was extracted from the wounds of the precious German soldier!

The city of Brussels " without the suburbs " (about 180,000 inhabitants) was condemned to pay a fine of £200,000 because two police agents had refused to arrest upon the injunctions of " an agent the depositary of the German authority "—for which read German spy an urchin who was indiscreetly selling foreign newspapers. In Antwerp the commune was forced to pay a fine of £2,000 which was particularly favourable tariff because a placard announcing a German victory in Poland had been torn. The little town of Lierre almost completely destroyed at the time of the siege of Antwerp had to pay £40 for a similar reason.

At Schellebelle (2,200 inhabitants) a telephone wire was broken; a fine of £4,000.

At Selzaete (5,500 inhabitants) a telephone wire was broken; a fine of £600 was imposed. It is claimed but, of course, by malicious tongues that here the German soldiers cut the wire by order.

At Puers the commune was condemned to pay a fine of £150 for the same reason. However, it was proved that corrosion was the cause of the break in the wire.

Malines was forced to pay a fine of £1,000 because the burgo-master did not warn the military authority of a journey which the Cardinal Archbishop, deprived of his motor-car, was forced to make on foot. (The eminent prelate had received an ovation from the peasants along the road.)

At Bruges two young children it appears dirtied a German flag. The commune had to pay £20,000 to expiate this abominable crime !

The city of Brussels, required to repair the road from Malines, a labour in no way incumbent upon it, refused to submit to this demand; it was condemned (in April, 1915) to pay a fine of 500,000 marks (£25,000). One remark in this connection: At present fines are usually reckoned in marks, but payment is demanded in francs. Now a decree of the 6th of October, 1914, fixed the price of the mark at 1fr.25 (whereas it is never worth more than 1fr.24) ; 500,000 marks therefore means in reality 625,000 francs to be paid by the Belgians affected, whatever may be the rate of exchange in the international markets.

At Middelkerke some German soldiers shot a carrier pigeon arriving from Ostend; under the pretext that this pigeon was carrying a letter, the town of Ostend was compelled to pay a fine of one million marks (£50,000). The burgomaster demanded a sight of the letter. He was refused; his rights were confined to payment! (At the same period the end of May, 1915 the Germans, always haunted by the fear of espionage, ordered a general massacre of carrier pigeons at Bruges and Ostend. And some of the Bruges fanciers had pigeon-lofts worth 12,000 and more.)

The town of Courtrai was forced, some months ago, to pay a fine of ten million marks (yes, £500,000) because a pretended secret store of weapons was found there. Now these were weapons belonging to private persons, collected and stored by the communal administration according to the instructions of the German Administration itself in a communal building.

A last example, not to prolong this summary indefinitely: The administrators of the National Bank urged the Provincial Councillors, who had consulted them on this subject, not to acquiesce in the renewal, then lately decreed, of the monthly payment of £1,600,000. Von Bissing (104) got wind of the incident, and as a result the National Bank had to pay the German Administration. by way of a fine a sum of £ 120,000. A mere trifle, is it not?

Among other " means of obtaining money" which the Germans use and abuse are these :

Passports, without which it is forbidden, in many parts of the country, to move from one locality to another (these passports are expensive, and at the end of a few days they lapse) (99).

Confiscations and seizures of all kinds; the Central Committee of the Belgian Red Cross refusing to occupy itself with undertakings which, although worthy of attention, were none the less entirely outside its province, von Bissing confiscated (on the 14th of April, 1915) the whole of its loose cash, or nearly £8,000. When a Belgian wishes to leave the country he has to pay lest he should be suspected of wishing to go to France or England a Iarge deposit. If he does not return within the prescribed time, or if he really goes to the " enemy country "-and the Germans are always very exactly informed in these matters the deposit is confiscated.

Then in certain cases of infractions of the German military law--which is interfering and fantastic to excess the prisoner is condemned to a term of imprisonment or a fine; a prolonged sentence of imprisonment, or a relatively light fine, matters being so arranged that the delinquent usually prefers to pay the fine. At least, it was so in the beginning; low the manoeuvre seldom succeeds, and it is rarely that the offender does not choose imprisonment.

Blackmail a method of the same category used also to yield an excellent profit. You were searched, and under the pretext that you had compromising papers on you, you were threatened with prison, but were given to understand that " this time " you would be left at liberty if you gave . . all that you could give.

There is still the tax on absentees. Belgians who left the country at the commencement of hostilities, and who have not returned by a given date, are forced, under penalty of the seizure of their personal property, to pay a supplementary tax equivalent to ten times the amount of the taxes which they paid to the Belgian State before the war. This fiscal measure is absolutely illegal, from whatever point of view we consider it; even if we were regarded as ordinary belligerents whose territory was legally occupied, it could not be legitimately applied to us. Now, to justify it, the German casuists have gone to the length of invoking I know not what regulations of The Hague Conventions ; as though there had not been an essential crime committed at the very beginning of the German occupation, which because unforeseen and unforeseeable falsifies all the dispositions of these Conventions; and as though the whole subsequent conduct of Germany as far as we are concerned had not been a constant and absolute disregard of all Conventions and all legality !

THE MARTIAL LAW OF GERMANY

The proclamations of which we have already seen a few examples have not remained dead letters. Martial law is applied in Belgium with a severity which is equalled only by the tranquil dignity 0f those whom it strikes. The military tribunals are virtually in permanent session, and they strike without pity and without appeal. It would be difficult to-day to number the sentences which they have pronounced, the sentences of imprisonment, sentences of deportation, sentences of penal servitude, sentences of death. For lack 0f space, and also for lack of sufficient documentation, I will do no more here than mention a few typical cases.

Despite all risks. intrepid couriers known as passeurs are at work introducing foreign newspapers into the occupied territory. The calling is profitable: certain English newspapers, and the Times in particular, are often sold at a very high price to the sequestered citizens, who are hungry for accurate news. (At the time of the fall of Antwerp a copy of the Times was sold for £4 and over.) But there are spies everywhere, and swarms of agents provocateurs. One day one of these individuals laid his hand upon the collar of a little colporteur who had, in all confidence, discreetly offered him an example of one of these prohibited newspapers. A policeman was close at hand; the spy re-quested him to arrest the delinquent; the worthy and paternal policeman refused; whereupon invectives, blows, the intervention of the crowd, the arrival of another policeman, and then the appearance of German soldiers.

A few days later the inhabitants of Brussels learned the sequel by means of the placard here reproduced:

NOTICE: A war tribunal legally convoked pronounced, on the 28th of October, the following sentences:

1. In the case of the police agent De Ryckere, for having attacked, in the exercise of his duty, an agent the depositary of the German authority, for wilful bodily injuries committed in two cases, in concert with others, for having procured the escape of a prisoner in the case and for having attacked a German soldier: five years' imprisonment.

2. In the case of the police agent Segers, for having attacked, in the exercise of his duty, an agent the depositary of the German authority, for wilful bodily injuries inflicted on this German agent, and for having procured the escape of a prisoner (all these infractions constituting a single action) : three years' imprisonment.

The sentences were confirmed on the 31st of October by the Governor-General, Baron von der Goltz.

The city of Brussels, without the suburbs, has been punished for the crimes committed by its police agent De Ryckere against a German soldier by an additional tax of £200,000.

General Five and Lieutenant Gille were retired Belgian officers living in Liege. Being themselves unable to serve in the army, they decided, in concert with some of their fellow-citizens, to help young men who wished to cross the frontier in order to enrol themselves in our army. They were unhappily betrayed by a piece of stupidity on the part of one of these young men, and after a longish term of " preventive detention " they were brought before a military tribunal, whose sentence was as follows (dated Liege, the 7th of January, 1915; signed, von Bissing) :

By judgment of the war tribunal at Liege the persons whose names follow have been sentenced for (crime of) war treason and for having participated in the crime: 1, the Belgian Lieutenant Gustave Gille, of Liege, to penal servitude for life; 2, the Belgian Brigadier-General (unattached) Gustive Five, of Liege, to penal servitude for life; 3, the tailor Ferdinand L'Homme, of Liege; and 4, the merchant Alfred Transquet of Liege, each to eight years' imprisonment; 5, the lithographer Guillaume Yerna, of 'Witte, to four years' imprisonment; 6, the artisan Ferdinant Wilde, of Liege, to three years' imprisonment.

The attitude of the two Belgian officers before their judges was superb. " You are accused of having assisted the escape of thirty-five young men who have gone to enrol themselves in the enemy army," said the president of the Court, a colonel. They smiled disdainfully; then, in virile tones, the elder of the two, the old General, replied: "You are mistaken; it is not thirty-five, but a full three hundred soldiers that we have had the honour to recruit for the country! As for the enemy, you are he!"

Among many others sentenced for similar actions I will mention Father Van Bambeke, of the Society of Jesus, whose attitude before the Court was equally fine.

When the President asked him what he would do if acquitted, he replied without hesitation : " I should begin again. You thought you did your duty in arresting me; I know that I am doing mine in urging my young compatriots to join those who are fighting for the liberation of our territory." Father Van Bambeke was sentenced to two and a half years' penal servitude. But owing to influence I do not know whose he was released after a few weeks' imprisonment.

At Roulers, in the latter half of May, 1915, a man named Carbonnez shouted, " Vive la France! " as a small convoy of French prisoners was passing. Arrested immediately, he was sentenced to three years' imprisonment and was deported to Germany.

The town was threatened with destruction should such a thing occur again.

On the 21st of May Mme. Henry Carton de Wiart was sentenced to three and a half months' imprisonment. On the following day she was deported to Germany.

This sentence was brought to the knowledge of the population of Brussels in the following terms:

Mme. Carton de Wiart, wife of the ex-Minister of Justice, was sentenced, on the 21st of May, by the military tribunal of the Government, to three months' and two weeks' imprisonment. Mme. Carton de Wiart has herself confessed that she has continually, in a large number of cases, and by evading the German post, caused letters to be forwarded to herself and to others in Belgium and across the Dutch frontier. She has thus withheld letters from the censorship and has rendered possible their utilisation for purposes of espionage and the transmission of forbidden news. She has, moreover, according to her own confession, distributed forbidden writings, while perfectly well aware of their offensive character. She has, lastly, and still according to her own confession, withheld and destroyed a letter addressed to the Kommaizdantur and placed by mistake in her letter-box. By such procedures it is possible to endanger the security of the German troops.

Consequently Mme. Carton de Wiart has had to be sentenced and transported to Germany.

When the Belgian Government was forced to leave Brussels, Mme. Carton de Wiart wished to remain in the capital, with her six children, in order to continue her activities in connection with the charitable undertakings over which she presided, and which, she considered with reason, would need her services more than ever. Generous and compassionate to a fault, if she secretly received and forwarded letters it was only to enable Belgian families which had remained in the occupied territory to obtain news of those at the front. As for the " forbidden writings " which Mme. Carton de Wiart confessed to having distributed, these were copies of the Pastoral Letter of Cardinal Mercier. Lastly, if this Belgian lady threw into her waste-paper basket a letter addressed to the Kommandantur, which the German post had, by mistake, delivered at her private house, it was because she quite rightly considered that it was no business of hers to repair the blunders of her country's enemies. Once and for all, it is the Germans who, in our country, are perpetually in the wrong, at every moment and in every action, and no well-born Belgian would consent to assist them in any way whatever.

The examination of Mme. Carton de Wiart lasted seven or eight hours, during which this noble lady did not for a moment depart from her smiling composure and her fine courage. After passing sentence, the presiding officer asked her. " Have you anything further to say, Frau Excellenz?" " I have this to add," she said, " that I disavow beforehand any intervention which might be made in my favour. I regard the penalty inflicted upon me as an honour, and I wish to undergo it to the end."

Wishing to recognise, by discreet but suitable acknowledgment, the inestimable services which the Spanish authorities, in concurrence with the Americans, have rendered us in the matter of revictualling our poor country, the communal administration of Charleroi decided to celebrate the birthday of King Alfonso in the schools of the town. A programme was drawn up; there would be a short talk about Spain, songs, and games (indoors) ; finally the school-children were to proceed in a body but in small groups, a class at a time, and in silence past the Spanish Consulate, just to see, without even -saluting it, the Spanish flag which would be flying above the Consulate on the King's birthday. It would have been an extremely discreet demonstration, which could not in any way have given umbrage to the sullen " occupants."

Unhappily the rumour got about that all the school-children of the town were to be massed in front of the Consulate, where they were to sing a cantata and cheer the Consul!

The result was that 0n the day of the celebration (the 17th of May) there were at one moment a thousand curious watchers before the Spanish Consulate awaiting the arrival of the school-children. Suddenly some German soldiers from the neighbouring barracks, commanded by a noncommissioned officer, came running up, and fell upon the inoffensive crowd, even releasing a huge unmuzzled watch-dog, which bit several persons.

The epilogue of this spoilt celebration was the following sentence :

The advocate Dewandre, Franz, of Charleroi, rue de Brabant, No. 1, acting as burgomaster in Charleroi, Belgium, is condemned, by virtue of paragraph 18, Chapter II, of the Imperial decree respecting the extraordinary legal regulations in time of war as affecting foreigners, dated the 28th of December, 1899, to pay a fine of two thousand marks (L100), payable to the funds of the arrondissement on or before the loth of June, 1915. In case of nonpayment within the time required a term of three years' imprisonent, because on the 17th of May, 1915, he did, at Charleroi, at the time of the anniversary of the birthday of the King of Spain, permit the schoolmistress of this town to repair with the children of the schools before the house of the Spanish Consul in this town for the purpose of (holding) a demonstration and for having accorded him a private ovation, and because he caused thereby a gathering of men and excited the local population. . . .

So it was as a " foreigner, and for a crime or pretended crime which he did not commit that this Belgian burgomaster was sentenced, on Belgian soil, and in the Belgian town under his administration!

A few months ago the Comte George de Beaufort, burgo-master of Onoz (in the province of Namur), was condemned to ten years' penal servitude. His offence? He had nursed and kept in his house a wounded French soldier: an act of treason in the eyes of the scoundrels who are masters of our country for the time being only by virtue of the vilest and most cowardly act of treason!

M. Maurice Lippens, who managed an important factory in the north of East Flanders, obstinately refused to furnish electric current for the famous iron wire stretched along the frontier between Belgium and Holland; he was deported to Germany.

M. Arthur Verhaegen, deputy for Gand, protested against the efforts of the Germans to force the workers of Gand to make sacks for the trenches; he was sentenced to two years' imprisonment in a German fortress.

On the 8th of September, 1915, a telegram from the Wolff Agency informed neutrals that Maître Theodor, President of the Order of Advocates, in Brussels, having forbidden a Brussels advocate to refer, in defending a client, to a decree issued by the German Governor-General, the latter considered that Maitre Théodor had " injured the interests of those amenable to justice," and had, for that reason, transported him to Germany until the close of hostilities. Now it should be said that some time earlier some documents had been seized on the premises of Maître Francis Wiener,1 of the Brussels Bar, and as President of the Bar Maître Theodor had addressed to the Governor-General a vehement protest against this abuse of power. This was the second time the courageous advocate permitted himself such an outburst, and it was evidently too much in von Bissing's opinion.

Here, by the way, is a typical example of the manner in which the said Governor-General and his satellites conceive of the " interests of those amenable to justice."

M. Jacques Timmermans, a Brussels manufacturer, was condemned to one year's imprisonment for giving information to two young men who wished to enrol themselves in our army. And to the sentence was added a statement that if the punishment inflicted was only one year's imprisonment, it was because, although the presumption of his guilt was grave enough, the facts were not absolutely established!

About the middle of November, 1915, some German soldiers invaded a communal soup-kitchen in Liege and proceeded to arrest M. Digneffe, deputy and communal councillor, one of the most highly respected figures in the industrial society of the city, and also the advocate, Paul Philippart-Staes, and several other persons who had been led thither by their evil star. The reason for this measure, which was revoked only upon payment of enormous sureties, was that these gentlemen were accused of giving " criminal" aid to the railway workers, who obstinately refused to work for the German Army.

In Brussels all Belgian ex-officers have to present themselves at the Kommandantur daily.

One fine day the Germans had something to say to General de Fauconval, General Janssens, General van Sprang, and Colonel Brassine: " Remain here: it has been decided to remove you to Germany." The officers were amazed, and demanded an ex-planation. No reply was vouchsafed them. " At least," demanded one of the prisoners, " let us go home for a few minutes so that we can bid our families good bye and take a few things away with us ! " This satisfaction was refused them. All that they could obtain, after lengthy discussion, was that they might send their families short notes which were carried by soldiers to inform them of their departure and to ask for a change of linen.

On the following day they were in Germany.

Hundreds of persons have been imprisoned or forced to pay heavy fines because they have received letters from abroad through blockade-runners.

Many, again, have been condemned to terms of ten and fifteen years' penal servitude, or even to penal servitude for life when it was not simply to death for having helped young men who were impatient to serve in our army to cross the frontier. The crime is known as " war treason " !

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

By judgment of the German Council of War of the 13th of April, 1915, confirmed by the commandant of the étape, the divisional chief of the Ministry of Railways, in Brussels, Lenoir, has been condemned to death for espionage. The sentence was carried out today, the 14th of April, 1915. The condemned man was shot.

So reads a communiqué issued at Gand, where the execution took place.

M. Lenoir had sent " abroad " that is, to the Belgian Government some notes referring to the German military transports in Belgium. Before execution his butchers made him pass before the coffin and hearse which were intended for him! As for his widow, she was immediately deported to Germany.

A notice posted on the walls of Liege on the 7th of June:

(The following) were shot to-day, the 7th of June, 1915, by virtue of the finding of the Council of War of the 5th of June, 1915:

Louise Frenay, née Derache, shopkeeper, of Liege; Jean-Victor Bourseaux, shopkeeper, of Liége; Julies Descheulter, shopkeeper, of Liers; Pierre Pfeiffer, artisan, of Haunt-Pre; Oscar Delarge, railway employé, of Statte (Huy) ; Justin Lenders, of Liege; François Barthelemy, shop-keeper, of Grivegne; Charles Simon, draughtsman, of Namur; all Belgian subjects, except Simon, a British subject. They had taken an active part in an organisation which forwarded to the enemy information as to the movements of our troops (obtained) from the military service of our rail-ways. They were found guilty of espionage.

The execution of Mme. Frenay and Justin Lenders appears to have been attended by particularly harrowing details. Various reports have been circulated whose veracity it was not always possible entirely to verify. According to one of these, which the Record Advertiser of Boston, U.S.A., reproduced, Mme. Frenay, only wounded by the first volley, and lying on the ground, was killed by a bullet from the revolver of the officer commanding the firing platoon. We record this detail with the necessary reservations.

About the middle of September, 1915, two citizens of Antwerp—M. Joseph Baeckelmans, architect, and M. Alexandre Franck, merchant were executed " for espionage " in the court-yard of the prison of Saint-Gilles-lez-Bruxelles. For espionage that is, for services rendered while in territory improperly occupied to their betrayed and mutilated country.

On their urgent petition the brother and the two sisters of Joseph Baeckelmans had obtained permission to bid him a last farewell. At the appointed time they reached the prison; they were brutally repulsed. They insisted, but it was of no use... . Hardly had they retired a few steps when they heard the shots of the firing platoon ! One of the martyred man's sisters fainted in the street. . . .

About the same time we learned that the " war tribunal " sitting in Brussels had passed sentence of death upon one Laurent Debakker, a commercial traveller of Uccle.

At the same time the station-master of Cuesmes was sentenced to penal servitude for life, and eight other persons, one of whom was a woman, were condemned to terms of ten and fifteen years' penal servitude. Their crimes were " espionage " and " complicity in the crime of espionage."

Lastly, " for having harboured a spy," a woman of Tournai was sentenced to ten years' penal servitude.

Early in October M. Nachtergael, son of the commandant of the fire brigade of Gand, and five other Belgian citizens were executed at Bruges.

At Hasselt, the chief town of the province of Limburg :

By the finding of the 7th of October of the field tribunal of the military government of Limburg, Pierre-Joseph Claes, of Belgian nationality, born the 8th of May, 1887, at Schaerbeek, near Brussels, was sentenced to death for espionage.

Claes confessed that in his capacity of Belgian soldier he came to Belgium dressed as a civilian with the object of practising espionage there. The condemned man was shot to-day, the 8th of October, 1915. Five other accused persons were sentenced each to fifteen years penal servitude.

It is not true that Claes confessed that he entered Belgium to practise espionage. He simply admitted that he was a Belgian soldier: no more. As a brave Belgian soldier Claes refused to have his eyes bandaged. And in the act of protesting his innocence he died erect, fierce and superb, shouting, " Vive la Belgique ! Vive la Liberte ! " His bearing was so splendid that it affected the dozen slaves who were to shoot him; they had not the courage to aim at him, and as only one bullet wounded him, and that not fatally, the non-commissioned officer in command

of the platoon had to kill him by firing a revolver into his ear. . . .

IN BRUSSELS :

By its finding of the 9th of October, 1915, the war tribunal has pronounced the following sentences for treason committed during a state of war (for forwarding recruits to the enemy) :

1. Philippe Baucq, architect, of Brussels.

2. Louise Thuliez, professor at Lille.

3. Edith Cavell, superintendent of a medical institute in Brussels.

4. Louis Severin, chemist, of Brussels.

5. Comtesse Jeanne de Belleville, of Montignies. All five sentenced to death.

6. Herman Capiau, engineer, of Wasmes.

7. Mme. Ada Bodart, of Brussels.'

8. Albert Libier, advocate, of Wasmes.

9. Georges Derveau, chemist, of Paturages. All four sentenced to fifteen years' penal servitude.

10. Princess Maria de Croy, of Bellignies. To ten years' penal servitude.

Seventeen other accused persons were sentenced to penal servitude or imprisonment varying from two to eight years.

Eight other persons accused of treason committed during a state of war were acquitted.

The sentence passed against Baucq and Cavell has already been carried out.

Brussels, 12th of October, 1915. The General Government.

Philippe Baucq and Edith Cavell alone were executed, and this a few hours only after the passing of sentence. Sentence was passed on the 9th of October, at 5 o'clock in the afternoon. At o'clock in the morning of the loth they were led to the public shooting-ground the Tir National. Then the last act of this gloomy tragedy was unfolded. Baucq was shot first, in the presence of Miss Cavell, who fainted at the sight and fell. The officer-executioner then ordered his men to carry the condemned woman to the spot indicated for the execution; they obeyed, but when they received the order to fire upon the unfortunate woman they obstinately refused. Then the officer whose part it was to carry out the noble works of His Majesty the Emperor Wilhelm leaned over the poor little motionless body and coolly discharged his revolver into the ear.

Amid the horrors of this Germanic war the fate of this noble woman is symbolic. " The story of this English nurse," M. Ferdinand Buisson, President of " The French League for the Defence of the Rights of the Man and the Citizen," has very justly observed, " the story of this English nurse is that of the conflict between two moralities : the one is a return to primitive barbarism, scientifically perfected by the military caste of Prussia; the other, ,which responds to the aspirations of the best of humanity, was, on the eve of the tempest, on the way to conquering the peoples, and it will, you may be confident, become the rule of humanity when German militarism has indeed been annihilated by the victory of justice in arms.

" Miss Cavell was condemned in the name of the pretended military law which the Germans oppose to The Hague Conventions. According to them a neutral country invaded and ravaged by one of the guarantors of its neutrality commits a crime if it attempts to resist the invader, a crime deserving the punishment of extermination. Let a citizen or a friend of this country abet this resistance even indirectly, and he commits not a crime, but a treason. They have invented a special term, ` war treason! ' Consequently there is only one penalty for this offence : the penalty suffered by traitors death. . . ." 1

" The sentence passed upon Miss Cavell is the most brutal, thé most insolent defiance of ordinary justice ever offered by the justice of militarism. If there existed a man knowing nothing of the war, it would be enough to tell him of the trial of Miss Cavell, and he would hold the name of German in abhorrence.

" Every possible aggravating circumstance would seem to have been purposely combined in order to render the murderous procedure more abominable; the cold and bloodthirsty premeditation; the examination, circumstantial and secret, to facilitate the sentence; the crafty and dastardly dissimulation intended to avert all clemency, to hold the victim safely until the last moment. She must die, and die at once. Never, since the virgin of Lorraine appeared before the infamous Bishop of Beauvais, has the sun shone upon a more sinister parody of justice.

" And who then is the dangerous criminal against whom the whole bristling arsenal of this pitiless inquisition is invoked? A woman who for twenty years has unrestingly devoted herself to solacing all our human miseries; in Brussels, quivering under the heel of the conqueror, she nursed with equal devotion the sick and wounded of all the armies; the victors and the vanquished, the invaded and the invaders."

If the assassination of Miss Cavell was not the first of its kind, neither, alas! was it the last; and this in spite of the consternation and indignation which it produced throughout the civilised world.

On the 17th of October, 1915, the " war tribunal " of Liege condemned to death:

1. Simon Orfal, Belgian subject, warehouseman, of Verviers;

2. Anna Benazet, of French nationality, tailoress, of Verviers;

3. Amedee Hesse, native of Luxemburg, dentist, of Spa ;

4. Constant Herk, Belgian, merchant, of Baden, near Dolhain.

They had " undertaken, for the benefit of the Allies, the task of watching the railways." (Five other prisoners were sentenced to terms of ten and fifteen years' penal servitude.)

A few days later, on the 27th of October, 1915, the same tribunal sentenced to death :

1. Leon François, tramway inspector ,of Larraeken; .

2. Felix Van der Snoeck, tramway inspector, of Glain;

3. Henri Noirfalize, blacksmith, of Chênee;

4. Oscar Sacre, drayman, of Ongree;

5. Henri Defechereux, gate-keeper, of Kinkempois;

6. Auguste Beguin, policeman, of Liege;

7. Lucien Gillet, blacksmith, of Graux (France) ;

8. Joseph Gillot, painter and glazier, of Liége;

9. Jean Legros, mechanician, of Liége.

Their crime? Always the same-" war treason"! They were all shot on the 28th of October. The soldiers told off for their execution were divided into three platoons, which stood back to back in the form of a triangle, each platoon having be-fore it three of the condemned prisoners. François died shouting, "Vive mon pays!" Gillet, who was secretary to the Syndicat des Métallurgistes du Nord, cried, " Vive la France!"

On the 2nd of November, 1915, the following were executed:

1. Jules Legay, platelayer, of Cuesmes;

2. Joseph Delsant, manufacturer of shoemakers' sundries, of Cuesmes ; and

3. Charles Simonet, labourer, of Mons;

who were tried in Brussels by the valiant champions of German Kultur, and were sentenced to death for having noted the passing of " the convoys of troops on two of the principal lines running to the front."

And this is not all ! The foregping summary is necessarily incomplete; it contains many lacunae.

And the same sort of thing is still going on !

And the neutral nations continue to . hold their peace. They persist in the silence and reserve which they believe to be prudent and discreet, but which in reality constitute a slow moral suicide.

And the brigand who governs Belgium and presides over these crimes has allowed himself to be created by I forget which Teutonic university a doctor, honoris causa, of juridical science. Yes, of juridical science !

I extract the following lines from a courageosu protest addressed to General von Bissing, some time last year, by Maître Théodor, President of the Order of Advocates in Brussels :

" Many protests have been addressed to me, in my capacity of President of the Order of Advocates, by compatriots who complain of grave abuses, particularly in the matter of repressive measures. It is not my place to judge of these protests; none the less, they reveal a situation which it is no longer possible to ignore. It is incumbent upon the Bar to consider this situation. . . .

" Regarding matters as a whole, without passion or partiality, the lawyer cannot fail to recognise that everything, in the Ger-man judicial organisation in Belgium, is contrary to the principles of justice. . . It is justice without a check; the judge is committed to himself—that is, to his impressions, his prejudices, and his environment. The prisoner is abandoned in his distress to an unaided struggle with his all-powerful adversary.

" This justice, which is uncontrolled, and therefore without guarantee, constitutes for us the most dangerous and oppressive illegality. We do not regard justice as a juridical or moral possibility without freedom of defence. Freedom of defence—that is to say, light shed upon all the elements of the trial: the public conscience making itself heard in the heart of the praetorium; the right to say everything in the most respectful manner, and also the courage to dare everything, placed at the service of misfortune, justice, and the law. It is one of the great conquests of our domestic history; it is the foundation-stone of individual liberty.

" What are your means of information?

" Apart from the judges of the court, they are the secret police and the informers.

" The secret police, without external marks or badges, mingling with the population in the streets, in the cafés, on the plat-form of the tramway stations, listening to conversations, ready to pounce upon their secrets; on the watch not only for actions, but for intentions.

" The race of informers, it is said, has increased. What value can their declarations possess, inspired as they are by hatred or rancour or base cupidity? Such auxiliaries could offer no useful aid to the task of justice.

" If we add to this total absence of control and defence the preventive arrests and the long periods of detention, and if to these we add the domiciliary searches, we shall have almost a complete vision of the mortal torture to which our aspirations, our thoughts, and our liberties are at present subjected. . . .

"Among the moral forces is there one which is superior to justice? . . . It is the basis of all civilisation; art and science are its tributaries; religions live and prosper in its shadow. It is not in itself a religion?

" Belgium has raised a temple to this religion in her capital. " This temple, which is our pride, has been turned into a barracks (55). A small portion, still further reduced from day to day, is reserved for the courts and tribunals. Magistrates and advocates have access to it by a servants' staircase. . . ."

Force installed in the temple of the Law is this not the perfect symbol of the German occupation in Belgium?

THE OCCUPATION AS SEEN BY NEUTRALS

At the end of December, 1914, a Norwegian lady living in Belgium wrote to one of her friends in Christiania, who had herself in the past made a long stay in our midst.

" I have been," she wrote, " to see the B —'s. They had received neither your letters nor your telegrams; but they had, quite recently, an opportunity to ask a Norwegian who was leaving to remember them to you.

" The Germans are insanely strict, and before our departure from Antwerp I was searched all over. Mme. C---, who wanted to rejoin her husband here in Holland, was arrested at the frontier and sent back under escort to Antwerp, where she was imprisoned for twenty-four hours; she had some letters on her, and an old passport. Happily we were able to continue our journey and warn her husband. He will remain for the time being in Holland. The Germans no longer allow them to leave the country; consequently those who can remain abroad do not run the risk of re-entering Belgium.

" We made a harrowing and rather lengthy journey lately from Antwerp to Louvain 3rd class; 1st and 2nd nur für Offizieren (for officers only) ! A stop of an hour and a half before arriving at Malines; there were, quite close to the rail-way, six common burial-pits. . . . All along the line from Malines to Louvain grave upon grave . . the fields trampled, great yawning holes made by the shells, a true chaos; all the houses, too, were ruined on either side of the line, and the woods cut down. As for the aspect of Louvain, it was enough to make one weep tears of blood. . . . We conversed with a great many inhabitants, and what they told us would have moved a stone. . . Their composure was especially impressive. . . We shall remain in Holland until after the New Year in order to write our letters, for it is impossible to write from Belgium. . . .

A few days later a friend a Dutchman who had lived in Brussels for a number of years wrote to me from The Hague:

" We left Brussels in December. One could no longer breathe there. There are spies everywhere; they listen to you in the trams in order to trap you. . . . After a disagreeable journey, which lasted three days, we arrived here. . ."

On the 13th of January, 1915, M. Andreas Buntzen said in the Berlingske Tidende of Copenhagen :

" When one travels through Belgium at express speed in a motor-car one's impression is that of bowling down a long road bordered by ruined houses. The whole country, moreover, is one huge graveyard."

One huge graveyard ! That Belgium which was formerly so smiling a country, of which men said, with due reason, that it was the kitchen-garden of Europe, is transformed into one huge graveyard!

There are witnesses in abundance to confirm what Maeterlinck told us.

Here, among other documents of the kind, is a report ad-dressed on the 1st of January, 1915, to the Rockefeller Foundation by its Relief Committee, which is composed of Messrs. Wickliffe, Rose, Director-General of the International Commission of Hygiene; Ernest P. Bicknell, Secretary of the American Red Cross Society; and Henry James, Director of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research:

" To understand the Belgian problem it is necessary to insist not so much on the poverty of a few hundred thousand men as upon the sudden inactivity imposed upon a healthy and vigourous nation of seven million souls. It is this that makes the situation of Belgium an example without precedent in history. . .

" The use of the telegraph and the telephone is strictly prohibited as far as the population is concerned. There is no international postal service, no communication with the outer world except by means of letters passing through the hands of the Germans.

" If anyone wishes to travel from one town to another he must, as a rule, obtain a special passport. He is compelled to waste hours in obtaining it. This is one reason why the Americans, who are authorised to move about with greater freedom, are employed to distribute provisions. The trains run practically for the Germans only.

" The obstacles which block certain canals have not yet been removed. A number of electric tramways providing a local service are running, and the main roads are still accessible; but most of the draught animals have been requisitioned. The circulation of automobiles is forbidden.

" The cash reserves and a large proportion of the negotiable securities of the banks were removed before the invasion. The issue of bank-notes by the National Bank has been stopped; but a number of towns and communes are issuing vouchers payable within the limits of their own territory.

" The German requisitions are paid for, not in cash, but by means of vouchers, which, according to report, more often than not assume the most invalid forms. Paper currency is itself so rare that the German occupation has been forced to exert its arbitrary authority in order to maintain the rate of exchange between the mark and the franc at the rate of Ifr.25.

" The banks have either interrupted their payments or have limited them to very small sums. The depositors of the savings banks cannot make withdrawals sufficient to cover the weekly expenses corresponding to the indispensable needs of a working-class family. The wealthy are not in a position to negotiate any of their investments (except, perhaps, through Germany), and they may literally find themselves without a sou.

" Modern society has obviously evolved in the direction of an extremely complicated mechanism of transport, communications, and credit. In Belgium this mechanism has been completely annihilated. It results from this that commerce and industry are completely at a standstill. The only tradesmen who still do a little business are those who sell alimentary products or clothing.

" In a few months' time the industrial populations will probably be suffering from the most incredible poverty. In centres such as Liege, Brussels, Louvain, and Malines bread is distributed gratuitously to a quarter or half the population.

As for the agricultural districts in general, it seems that the destruction of food stores is of greater importance than the destruction of the houses. When the latter are burned their former occupants install themselves in the houses of their more fortunate neighbours; or they often continue to live within their own walls--even under the most inconvenient conditions and without the least sign of comfort. But without draught horses they are scarcely in a position to plough, sow, or reap. Now the country has been almost completely drained of horses and cattle. The armies have not even refrained from requisitioning milch cows.

" The German occupation has requisitioned grain, provisions, cattle, and horses in the towns and in the country. It has also requisitioned the stocks of cotton and wool, and of raw materials as well as of manufactured products, brass and copper fixtures, the plant of certain factories, motor-cars, benzine, and all plant which can serve for the manufacture of arms and munitions.

" In the course of our journeys through Belgium we have seen hardly any cattle, and, indeed, no swine and no horses. Some villages have been completely destroyed. A certain number of houses have been burned in nearly all the towns and villages along the principal paths of the invasion. The inhabitants, as a rule, have had no time to save anything except the few clothes on their backs. . . .

" The destruction of implements and equipment cannot be estimated.. In the smallest localities through which the army has passed, just as in some of the great cities, such as Louvain and Malines, all the houses which are left have been pillaged. We have observed in many houses that pieces of furniture impossible to carry away had been broken to pieces. . . ."

Here, lastly, is a more recent sketch, taken from another point of view. It was published in the Telegraaf by M. Hans, and was based upon the information supplied by a Dutch waterman. He had travelled with his barge from Holland to Antwerp, then to Termonde and into Flanders, and the impressions which he received in the course of this voyage were so painful that he resolved to navigate through Belgium no longer while the Germans were there :

" It is miserable to navigate the Scheldt or the Lys now," says this humble but very sincere observer. " The sight of Antwerp gives you the hump. You've been so used to the bustle and movement there, the basins full of barges, the quays loaded with merchandise, where you had to keep a good look-out in order not to get knocked over by a train. . . You can still hear, in your mind, the noise of the drays, the whistling of the tug-boats, the creaking of the chains, the singing of the bargemen. Now it is death ! Yes, Antwerp is dead. "

As for Termonde, which had also been familiar to him Termonde, so full of movement, so gracious of aspect this is what he says :

It looked to me entirely destroyed. What ruin, what misery ! . . . Lots of people live together in one room, or in a cellar, or a stable. . . . They repair everything with tarred paper. If there's a hole the wind blows through, they stick tarred paper over it; if there's a window gone, more tarred paper! . . . What a wretched sight! . . .

" At the sight of all that ruin, at the sight of so much poverty and such wretchedness, I cried more than once, and I was glad to get out of the town. I passed under the bridge but the permit cost me five marks. . . .

" There are sentinels at all the bridges, at all the locks. You have the feeling you're navigating in another country. Before, one was so free and comfortable there. Now you have to be always minding what you're doing, and every minute there are fresh orders. Sometimes I've had to stop to make way for a submarine going to Bruges had to wait till the monster had passed. Who would ever have thought it? submarines in the Belgian canals!..."

Then the good man gives some professional details. There is little money to be made. It is true that the Germans would very much like to make use of the barges, but the Belgian barge-men, despite enticing offers, refuse to serve the enemy. The only work they consent to do, he explains, is to navigate the canals for the American Relief Committee. In this way they are helping their poor countrymen, and in the towns where they discharge their cargoes they receive many manifestations of gratitude and fraternity. And this lover of the green waters and the wandering life ends on a note of disenchantment: " It's done with ! It's no longer the Belgium it was! "

RELIEF AND MUTUAL AID

Squeezed almost to death, and isolated from the outer world, Belgium would die of starvation without the intervention of two admirable organisations of which I want to tell you something: the " National Committee of Relief and Alimentation " and the " Commission for Relief in Belgium."

The National Committee is the result of an extension of the " Central Committee " constituted in Brussels early in September, 1914, upon the initiative of an eminent citizen, M. Ernest Solvay, and a few other men of action, heart, and energy an undertaking whose activity was at first confined to the city and district of Brussels.

It was Ernest Solvay himself who recommended this extension, having foreseen the necessity of it immediately. Then, at his request, the Marquis de Villalobar, the Spanish Minister, and Mr. Brand Whitlock, the United States Minister in Brussels, who had already consented to patronise the work of the Central Committee, opened negotiations with von der Goltz, and obtained from him " the assurance that the provisions of all kinds imported by the Committee for the alimentation of Belgium should be exempt from requisitions on the part of the military authorities and should remain at the exclusive disposal of the Committee."

A delegation was sent to London in order to request the British Government to authorise the importation into Belgium of all provision proceeding from neutral countries which should be intended for the civil population of Belgium.

The British Government granted this authorisation, subject always to the condition that as far as the Belgian frontier the products imported should be placed under the supervision of the representatives of Spain and the United States in London and The Hague, and that from the frontier to the distributing ware-houses in Belgium the transport of these products should be effected under the protection of the Spanish and United States Ministers in Brussels.

Under these conditions there came into being, on the one hand, the " National Committee for Relief and Alimentation," a Belgian organisation, and, on the other hand, the " Commission for Relief in Belgium (or the C.R.B.), an American organisation.

The C.R.B. undertakes the collection of foreign donations, and also the purchase and transport of provisions for the relief of Belgium. It fulfils its mission with the assistance of three principal offices : the London office purchases the provisions and collects donations in kind and sends them to Rotterdam, while the Rotterdam office receives and tranships the goods and forwards them into Belgium by way of the Scheldt or the Meuse, and, lastly, the Brussels office, by means of its delegates who are American subjects sees that the German authorities respect the engagements into which they have entered with the Governments of Spain and the United States. Services of messengers transported by motor-car facilitate the admirably organised work of the Brussels office.

The " National Committee for Relief and Alimentation " undertakes by agreement with the C.R.B. the distribution of provisions throughout the whole of the occupied portion of Belgium. It fulfils its mission by means of ten provincial committees, or one per province, the tenth looking after the city and district of Brussels. These provincial committees, acting in concert with the communal administrations, ensure the distribution of provisions in every arrondissement, taking due note of the number of the inhabitants and the local wants and conditions.

The National Committee lived at first from hand to mouth, thanks to the small reserves which still existed in the country, and the small quantities of foodstuffs which it was able to pro-cure in Holland and in England. Then about the middle of December, 1914, large cargoes of foodstuffs began to arrive from America.

By the 15th of July, 1915, the two Commissions had managed to import into Belgium 530,000 tons of wheat and flour, 50,000 tons of rice, about 35,000 tons of bacon, and more than 750,000 tons of other foodstuffs.

The National Committee had at its disposal, to begin with, a sum of £640,000. Since then fresh funds have come into its possession millions and millions of francs principally from England and the British colonies and from America.

The National Commission assumes, in short, the tutelary function of the temporarily exiled State. Without replacing the communes, it supplements their activities in many instances. In particular, it assists them to make provision for the distributions of foodstuffs which are known by the denomination of the " communal soup."

This " communal soup" consists of . a daily distribution (gratuitous) of half a litre of soup and 250 grammes of bread,' with a weekly distribution of 3.5 kilos of potatoes, 50 grammes of coffee, and 50 grammes of chicory for each person registered, and in winter 40 kilos of coal per household.'

In September, 1914, 16.2 percent. of the population of Brussels were receiving these gratuitous distributions. At the end of November the proportion was 23.8 per cent.; at the end of February, 1915, it was 25.9 per cent. ; at the end of March it was nearly 30 per cent.; and it continued to increase, so that in Greater Brussels alone more than 250,000 persons a great number of whom are small tradesmen or clerks, drawing neither dividends nor salary are at present reduced to living upon public charity.

In the provinces the situation is equally lamentable. Thus a statement published in June, 1915, gave the number of Belgians who were completely destitute and were living entirely on the " communal soup " as 1,500,000. To maintain them it was necessary to find £500,000 monthly! And the wonderful thing is that it was found!

In order to avoid the moral and professional decadence of the thousands and thousands of artisans condemned to idleness, the city of Brussels, in July, 1915, introduced a measure of compulsory technical instruction for the unemployed in receipt of relief; and the National Committee immediately sought to extend the application of this beneficent measure to the entire country.

It was decided, on principle, that all the unemployed must henceforth, in order to obtain relief in respect of enforced idleness, attend the classes of this new system of instruction. The instruction is given in French and Flemish, and comprises elementary technology, or industrial design, hygiene, and working-class lesgislation. Of course, these subjects are treated in an exclusively practical manner.

The teaching staff for instruction in technology has been recruited from among the employers and artisans of sixteen professional groups. Hygiene is taught by physicians, and working class legislation by members of the junior Bar.

As admirable an organisation as it is gigantic (for some 75,000 persons devote their energies to it), this "National Committee for Relief and Alimentation " may at a later date, when we have recovered the plenitude of our resources, serve as the foundation and framework of a new economic organisation of the nation. Born of the most precarious circumstances in which a great human collectivity has ever found itself, this organism might readily be adapted to happier conditions, and who knows but that there will then emerge from it, quite naturally, the germ of a highly satisfactory solution of the social question? Then, if ever, we should be entitled to say: " It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good " !

" LA LIBRE BELGIQUE "

Only German newspapers and, what comes to the same thing, newspapers printed in French or Flemish under the control of the German authorities are authorised in occupied Belgium. Yet there is one Belgian newspaper appearing in Belgium only one La Libre Belgique.

It is a poor little newspaper, which for excellent reasons has no " special wire " at its disposal, nor has it any connection with any international news agency. Its means of information, on account of the " wall of blood," are infinitely more limited than were those even of the founders of the first printed news-sheets four hundred years ago. But in the absence of news from the outer world it offers its readers cheerful and witty sarcasms concerning the present régime, and while it nourishes their good humour it also sustains their optimism.

" Not submitting itself to any censorship," La Libre Belgique is necessarily anonymous, and is printed on a secret press; but von Bissing received a copy as soon as it appeared. Some months ago the impertinent little sheet even published, on the first page, a photograph evidently " faked "—showing the Governor-General reading . La Libre Belgique.