Belgians Under the German Eagle - Jean Massart

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

      Railway Journeys.

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

       November 1914.

      Official Railway Time-table

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

      General Arrangements.

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

      These are:—

      1. Brussels—Aix-la-Chapelle.

       2. Brussels—Lille.

       3. Brussels—Namur.

       4. Brussels—Charleroi.

       5. Louvain—Charleroi.

       6. Brussels—Antwerp.

       7. Brussels—Courtrai.

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

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

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

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

      Footnote

       Table of Contents

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

      

      BELGIANS UNDER THE GERMAN EAGLE

       THE VIOLATION OF NEUTRALITY

       Table of Contents

       Table of Contents

      We were too confiding.

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

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

      The Belgians' Distrust of Germany lulled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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