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Belgians Under the German Eagle. Jean Massart
Читать онлайн.Название Belgians Under the German Eagle
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isbn 4064066137052
Автор произведения Jean Massart
Жанр Документальная литература
Издательство Bookwire
The Governor-General in Belgium,
Baron von der Goltz,
Field-Marshal.
Brussels, 4th November, 1914. (Posted in Brussels.)
Military Court.
In pursuance of 18, 2 of the Imperial decree of 28th December 1899, the following persons have been punished:—
(a) The coal-merchant Jules Pousseur, of Jambes, with 2 months' imprisonment and a fine of 100 marks, or 20 days' additional imprisonment.
(b) His daughter, Camille Pousseur, with 2 months' imprisonment, because they frequently bought foreign newspapers and articles from newspapers whose sale is prohibited; and further because the daughter copied and collected, with the knowledge and permission of her father, poems and articles hostile to Germany, containing, for the most part, vulgar and obscene insults in respect of the Emperor, the Confederate Princes, and the German Army; and because she further, as one may fully realize from the careful manner in which the numerous copies were made, communicated the originals to others, and finally because Jules Pousseur admits that he has for some time been engaged in forwarding letters, which is forbidden.
The terms of imprisonment will run from the first day of detention. The copies and other writings will be retained.
L'Ami de l'Ordre, 4th April, 1915.
The German Censorship.
After the 20th August the eastern half of Belgium was thus deprived of all intellectual communication with the outside world. For a fortnight we were left absolutely without news. Then, from the 5th September, the German Government permitted the publication of journals which were carefully expurgated, and falsified by a rigorous censorship:[4] Le Quotidien, Le Bruxellois, L'Écho de Bruxelles, Les Dernières Nouvelles; and later Le Belge, La Belgique, La Patrie, etc., in Brussels, L'Avenir in Antwerp, and many more. Although submitted to the censorship, the appearance of these newspapers was only provisional and uncertain. Le Bien Public reminds its readers of the fact in its issue for the 13th December, 1914. All these journals were on occasion suspended; for example, Le Quotidien, from the 9th to the 11th December, 1914, without any reason being given; L'Ami de l'Ordre, from the 2nd to the 7th September, 1914, for having printed an acrostic regarded as insulting; and Le Bien Public, during the whole of May, 1915.
The illustrated journals were as much subject to the censorship as the ordinary newspapers. Numbers 1 to 3 of 1914 Illustré, published before the arrival of the Germans, could no longer be exposed for sale: No. 1 containing portraits of King Albert, Nicholas II, M. Poincaré, and King George V; No. 2 the portrait of General Leman, and No. 3 that of M. Max. From November onwards the issues were severely edited, so that they contained, for example, scarcely any more photographs of towns burned by the German army. The other illustrated papers—Actualité Illustré, Le Temps Présent, etc., also had none but anodyne photographs, such as portraits of the new masters, military and civil.
In some degree to replace the newspapers, the printers conceived the idea of publishing little booklets relating to the war, but giving no direct news of the military operations. These publications were naturally subjected to the censorship, and many of those which were published before the decree of the 13th October, 1914, were prohibited; it was thus with the very interesting brochure, M. Adolphe Max, bourgmestre de Bruxelles, son administration du 20th août au 26th septembre, 1914, and the Nos. 1 to 10 of the booklets issued by Mr. Brian Hill. Illustrated postcards also were censored; the series in course of publication, representing the ruins of Louvain, Dinant, Charleroi, Liége, etc., had to be interrupted. Music even had to receive the official approbation (see the placard of 27th March, 1915, p. 274).
In short, it will be seen that our public life already very closely approached the German ideal: Alles ist verboten. To think that Belgium, so justly proud of her constitutional liberties, is now crushed, breathless, under the heavy Prussian jack-boot!
Authorized German Newspapers.
As a compensation for those which the German Administration felt obliged to suppress, it allowed us, about the 10th September, to receive some German newspapers—the Kölnische Zeitung, Kölnische Volkszeitung, Düsseldorfer Tageblatt, Düsseldorfer General-Anzieger, and also a few illustrated papers, notably the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung, Die Wochenschau, Du Kriegs-Echo. At a later date other newspapers were tolerated: Vossissche Zeitung, Berliner Tageblatt, Frankfurter Zeitung, Berliner Zeitung am Mittag, L'Ami du Peuple (a special edition, for Belgium, in French and German, of Der Volksfreund, of Aix-la-Chapelle), and also some new illustrated papers, for example, Kriegsbilder, Zeit im Bild, and above all the Illustrierte Kriegs-Kurier, published in German, Flemish, French, and English,[5] whose sixteen pages, all covered with illustrations, cost only 15 centimes: evidently an instrument of propaganda, subsidized by the Central Administration. We shall have occasion later on to insist on its veracity, if one may call it that. For a long time none of these journals reached us regularly.
We had also access to two journals published by the Government itself: (1) the Deutsche Soldatenpost (Herausgegeben von der Zivil-Vorwaltung des General-Gouverneurs in Belgiën), originally reserved for soldiers, but which was also sold to civilians—in a very intermittent fashion, it is true—from September 1914 to the beginning of December 1914; (2) Le Réveil (Écho de la Presse, Journal officiel du Bureau allemand à Düsseldorf pour la publication de nouvelles authentiques à l'étranger), the latter being published simultaneously in French and German. Forty-nine numbers were published. It felt such an insurmountable disgust for untruth that having announced in the introductory article of its first number that Belgium was entirely in the hands of the Germans, it spoke, in a neighbouring column, of battles in Western Flanders between the Germans and the Allies. Let us say at once that from the point of view of sincerity and liberty of opinion all the newspapers of the Trans-Rhenian world are of equal worth: official or otherwise, they only publish that which is allowed, or rather, inspired, by the Government.
Authorized Dutch Newspapers.
One newspaper not subject to the Imperial censorship, one only, has found grace with the authorities—the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant. Its tendencies, clearly favourable to Germany, enable it to penetrate into Belgium; but not equally all over the country. At Gand one may subscribe to it; but its sale in single numbers is prohibited. In Antwerp it was proscribed for several months from the 7th December.
At Louvain and Brussels it may be sold in the street, and also supplied to subscribers. But it must not be supposed that the paper is anywhere regularly distributed; the edition of the morning of the 10th November, 1914, was forwarded on the 27th November to a few subscribers who were particularly persistent in their demands; it is true that this number contains the article on the letters of prisoners of war made by the Belgians (pp. 104-5), and that these letters annihilate not a few accusations made by the Germans, while they throw a singular light on their lies and acts of pillage. As for the issues for the 6th, 7th, and 8th December, 1914, they were never distributed; an official announcement, which appeared in L'Ami de l'Ordre of the 9th and 10th December states that these numbers contain "inadmissible communications as to the dislocation of troops." The issues of the 24th, 25th, and 26th December were also withheld. Since January 1915 some ten numbers have been prohibited each month.
From the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant we have copied