Belgians Under The German Eagle - free ebook by Jean Massart

BELGIANS UNDER THE GERMAN EAGLE

BY JEAN MASSART Vice-Director of the Class of Sciences in the Royal Academy of Belgium TRANSLATED BY BERNARD MIALL LONDON T. FISHER UNWIN LTD. ADELPHI TERRACE...

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PREFACE

These pages were written in Belgium between the 4th August, 1914, and the 15th August, 1915. I employed in this work only those books and periodicals which entered the country, whether secretly or openly, and which every one, therefore, can procure. But to drive conviction into the reader's mind I have observed a rule of selection in using these documents: I have used those exclusively which are of German origin, or which are censored by the Germans. They are— (A) German posters exposed in Belgi

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Intellectual Life in Belgium.

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

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A.—The Preliminaries.

We were too confiding. With the exception of the military and a few statesmen, the Belgians were convinced that nations, just as individuals, were bound by their engagements, and that as long as we remained faithful to our international obligations, the signatories of the Treaty of London (19th April, 1839), which set forth the conditions of the neutrality, or rather of the neutralization, of Belgium ( Belg. All. , p. 3), would equally observe their obligations towards us. However, in 1911, duri

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B.—Justification of the Entry into Belgium.

"Strategic necessities!" said the German Chancellor. These necessities are expounded in the ultimatum, and may be summed up thus: "Germany knows that France is preparing to attack her through Belgium." The first question which occurs to us is: Was France really preparing to cross our territory, and had she massed troops near our frontier? There is assuredly no one outside Germany who would admit this. Indeed, if important bodies of troops had been massed in the north of France they could effectu

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C.—German Accusations against Belgium.

There is one circumstance which aggravates the evil deed which has soiled the German name. It is the insistence with which the Press and the politicians of Germany seek to cast the blame on Belgium herself. For if we are to believe them it was Belgium who began. Necessity of influencing Neutrals. When the German rulers discovered, to their utter stupefaction, real or feigned, that America and the other neutral States did not benevolently accept the strategical excuse for the violation of Belgian

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

Falsification of the Greindl Report. On the 14th October, 1914, the German Government posted on the walls of Brussels a placard entitled: England and Belgium ( Documents found at the headquarters of the Belgian Staff ). A reproduction of this placard was distributed gratuitously, thousands of copies being issued the same day. This document contains, first, a rapid summary of a report on the relations which existed in 1906 between the Belgian Chief of Staff and the British military attaché. Then

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2. The Reports of Generals Ducarne and Jungbluth.

The falsifications inserted in these documents by the German diplomatists have already been lucidly exposed (for example, by E. Brunets, Calomnies Allemandes ); so there would be no need to return to the subject, had not the German Government thought fit to attempt to use these documents in order to demoralize the Belgians. At the end of December 1914, and in January 1915, Germany distributed hundreds of thousands of copies of a pamphlet containing several documents, among which were translation

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

The three Successive Proposals of Wilhelm II to Belgium. Under its dry, cold, diplomatic phrasing the reply to the ultimatum (1st Grey Book , No. 22) scarcely conceals the indignation which thrilled the heart of Belgium when Wilhelm II offered her the chance of associating herself with his crime against loyalty. But the German Government did not understand this indignation, neither was it conscious of its own infamy. Otherwise how could it have repeated the same offer a few days later—an offer a

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

Under the pretext that France was making ready to attack her, Germany hastened to invade Belgium and Luxemburg. But France was not preparing to invade the Rhine provinces of Prussia, and this pretended threat of aggression was merely a trick, intended to frighten Parliament, and to obtain a vote approving the actions of the Ministry and giving it carte blanche . The manœuvre completely succeeded; the Government received a unanimous vote, in spite of the Chancellor's admission: "We are committing

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B.—The "Belgian Atrocities."

The Pretended Cruelty of Belgian Civilians toward the German Army. In order to organize the massacres by means of which it expected to terrorize our country, the Great General Staff had to have at its disposal troops on which it could count without reserve, which would not shrink before the bloodiest task, and to which no repressive measures would seem excessive. The Staff had to be certain it would be obeyed without hesitation when it ordered, as at Dinant, the death of seven hundred men, women

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C.—Violations of the Hague Convention.

Nothing would be easier than to show that our enemies have not respected a single one of the articles of the Hague Convention. But it is not our intention to draw up this inventory. We prefer to confine ourselves to a few facts which no one can dream of contesting, so patent are they and so well known to every one in Belgium. And we shall refer only to those which will enable us to compare the two mentalities: that of the German, crafty and tyrannical, and that of the Belgian population, refusin

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A.—Pride.

Some Manifestations of Pride and the Spirit of Boasting. "The German nation is the Chosen People, and God is with us." That is the prevailing idea of the speeches and proclamations of the Kaiser. In his Speech from the Throne on the 4th August, 1914, he declared: "It is not the spirit of conquest which urges us forward; but we are animated by the inflexible determination to retain the position in which God has set us, for ourselves and for all the generations to come." In her pride Germany is un

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1. Militarism.

Might comes before Right. Bismarck has given us a precise formula of the cult of brute force, "Might comes before right!" Nietzsche has gone further, "Might creates right." "You say that a good cause sanctifies even war? I tell you that a good war sanctifies any cause!" ( Thus Spake Zarathustra ). Herr Maximilian Harden, the well-known polemical writer, expressed the same idea in a lecture delivered at Duisbourg and reproduced in K.Z. (8th December, 1914). It is expressed with equal lucidity in

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2. Disdain of Others.

We have seen that the Germans are seeking by all possible means to accentuate their superiority over their neighbours. An elementary procedure for increasing the vertical distance between them and their rivals consists in depreciating the latter. Germany has so often, in every tone of voice, proclaimed the irremediable inferiority of all the other peoples inhabiting our planet, that she has at last come to believe it herself, and has begun to act in conformity with her belief. Some Inept Proclam

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3. Cynicism.

They must require a good stock of effrontery to put before us such assertions as that of the Kaiser, whose falsity is obvious at sight. They cannot be ignorant of the fact that these impostures are instantly exposed. But this consideration does not give them pause; German superiority appears to them so indisputable that they have no need to trouble about the opinion of other people; if they occasionally indicate the reasons for their actions, it is to reassure their own conscience, not to justif

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B.—Untruthfulness.

To describe frankly and completely the attitude of the Germans in Belgium during the present war, without speaking of their duplicity, would be an impossible task; so that the reader must not be surprised that on every page of our record we have pinned down at least one lie. We must not forget that modern Germany follows the examples of Bismarck, and that Bismarck himself proclaimed that he had caused the outbreak of the war of 1870 by a skilful falsification of a Government despatch. At the tim

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1. A Few Lies.

Number 50 of Die Wochenschau (1914, p. 1588) contains a photograph in which we see sailors loading a gun installed among sand-hills. The inscription underneath (translated from the German) reads: "Belgian gun, captured and served by German sailors on the coast of the Channel." The Channel! The Germans have never been there: they did set out, full of enthusiasm, for Calais, and then the shore of the Channel, and then London. But in that direction they never got farther than Lombartzyde, on the ri

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C.—Incitements to Disunion.

Divide et impera ("Divide in order to rule") is a maxim which has largely inspired the Germans in their relations with the Belgians. They therefore do their utmost to divide the nation from its King, to excite the Belgians one against another, and finally to kindle discord between our Allies and ourselves. We have just seen by what unjustifiable methods, after promising to respect our patriotism, they proceeded systematically (as they do all things) to thwart our sentiments of fidelity to our Ki

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D.—A Few Details of the Administration of Belgium.

The preceding chapter has informed us how the Germans bore themselves towards the inhabitants of the territory occupied in conformity with—or rather in contravention of—Articles 42-56 of the Hague Convention. Treachery and untruthfulness are the chief weapons employed by our enemies. We need not return to the subject. We desire now merely to refer to some details relating to the administration. Details, we said; and in truth we shall consider neither the financial administration of the country,

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E.—Ferocity.

We may be brief, for the cruel character of Kultur is so obvious, and appears so plainly from the documents cited, that it would be idle to insist upon it. If it were necessary to justify our aversion, we need only remark that the cruelties recorded were systematically premeditated. Do not the Kriegsbrauch im Landkriege ( Usages of War on Land according to the Great General Staff ) state that the observation of these usages is not "guaranteed by any sanction other than the fear of reprisals," an

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1. Aggravations.

A general remark occurs to us at once: it is that the Germans have failed in their object. For instead of exasperating us to the point of forcing us to commit some imprudence, which they would have been obliged to repress, they simply made sure of our profound contempt. To tell the truth, each fresh persecution makes us furious for a day; but the sense of irony soon regains the upper hand, and then we have only one anxiety: to make their latest form of vexation ridiculous by all the means in our

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2. Physical Tortures.

We shall not here refer to the innumerable cases of torture cited in the Reports of the Commission of Inquiry, nor those reported in Nothomb's La Belgique Martyre . We will confine ourselves to facts of which we have personal knowledge. The Germans will, of course, seek to deny them. So it is as well to begin by a declaration of their own. Vorwärts , on the 23rd August, 1914 (the very day on which the chief atrocities were committed in the Dinant district), protested against the proposal made by

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