The Spell of Belgium Part 25

"Tommy gives the bombs such amusing names, 'Black Marias,'

'Aunt Sally's Nephews,' and 'Eagle Eggs.' The German trench motor is called 'The Undertaker.' The anti-aircraft gun is nicknamed 'Archibald' and the German howitzer which emits a thick white smoke is called 'The Woolly Bear.' He calls these picturesque names 'Slanguage.'"

"BRUSSELS--November.

"We are pa.s.sing horrible hours. You cannot imagine what it has been the last three months. Everywhere misery, crepe and ruin.

To add to the horror of the situation, famine has arrived. Most of our friends have had their chateaux pillaged. The buildings even are often destroyed. Our friends arrive in the night on foot, with all that they own on their backs and their children following them. They often walk miles before finding a roof to shelter them, for many villages are burnt to the ground, deserted, and many of the people shot. _C'est affreux!_

"Henri has won two _galons_ for his bravery in battle. The last news we have of him is good. _Dieu merci._ Jean has been slightly wounded. What a relief to have him safe for the moment in a hospital. George de Ligne, Henri d'Oultremont, _tues_, Guy Reynteins _blesse_. Two of the Cornet Counts have been taken from their chateau, which was burned, and no one knows what has become of them. Every day the Germans are more brutal and more hateful. They are worse than they are depicted.

"We are indeed grateful to the American Minister. He is intelligent, active and kind, as well as a charming man.

"It is difficult to get the food distributed in the villages, for there are no means of conveyance, except motors run by twenty-four young Americans. They are doing fine work and are a great help. The d'a.s.sches, de Merodes, Beeckmans and de Beughems are here."

A letter from Switzerland reads:

"November.

"I have been at a camp of French and Belgian soldiers in Germany, nearly fifteen thousand of them, all without blankets.

They dig holes in the ground and get into them, and then spread their coats over the top in order to sleep and keep warm."

A letter from a cousin at a hospital in France says,

"Today seventy French soldiers were brought in, all with their right hands gone."

"BRUSSELS--end of December.

"The weather is awful, the fighting in the North has been again very violent. We have little wool to knit with. We need flannel too for the soldiers. It is freezing. We are trying to get warm clothes to the soldiers. We are having a snowstorm such as has not been seen for twenty years, in fact one might be in America. The snow has lasted five days. Everything is all frozen and one slips and the trams are all crowded. Hospital things are particularly necessary.

"My husband asked a German, an old friend of his, if it was possible for me to take clothes to the English prisoners here.

He was refused. No one has been able to help the poor English, and G.o.d only knows how they are being treated by these brutes.

We have been able to help the French prisoners."

"February.

"I saw at Ostend an old woman of ninety, who had walked from Waterloo. I do not like to write much, as it is safer not to do so. The money that was sent will go at once to a woman with five children, whose husband was wounded. I have been taking care of him at the hospital. He is well again and leaves today for the front. The wounded try to get well as quickly as possible, as they want to return to the front.

"My villa _a Duinbergen pres de Heyst sur mer_ is occupied by the Germans. My maid was left in charge. The Germans ordered her to give them our clothes. I hear my house is a house _de debauche et d'orgie. La femme de chambre a ete molestee par un soldat ivre._ When the old gardener and his wife tried to interfere, the soldiers said if they did, they would shoot them. Oh, when will this cease and the world know the truth?

_Cette abominable race!_ My heart is broken."

"THE HAGUE, Feb. 22, 1915.

"My uncle and aunt are in Anjoux. Think of the life they lead, constantly struggling against all sorts of plunder, the worst elements of the population now having free play. Anarchy is uppermost in many places.... They have no respect for anything.

What ruin on all sides, and to think that our poor little country was always so hospitable to those Germans!

"As to the Royal family: I know the Queen never leaves La Panne (the last Belgian village). Every day she is with the wounded and goes very near the trenches. She is admirable in her courage and strength, and I know she suffers terribly from the conduct of her compatriots (she is Bavarian), but in justice I must say that the Bavarians have everywhere behaved better than the others. The Prussians have been terrible. The old Princesse de Ligne, widow of Prince Edward, who is the Mother of the Councillor of our Legation here in The Hague, arrived here in October. She stayed one month and a half at the Chateau de la Neuville, near Liege, and under German dominion. Although speaking German perfectly, as she is Austrian by birth, she had a great deal to suffer. A German colonel with his revolver in his hand followed her all over the house and made her show him everything. (The same thing happened to the Comtesse de Merode at the Chateau de Waterloo; everything was opened, searched, and in part plundered.) The Princesse de Ligne replied to one officer that a certain old salver of repousse silver was not for sale, when he wished to buy it. The next day that and other pieces of silver were gone. At Conjoux they pa.s.sed days of anguish during the burning of Dinant. There was a battle in the wood back of the little house where we had so often had tea.

"The plundering of Dinant was most terrible, and what has been told of the horrors of that time is not at all exaggerated. Up to the present time they have exhumed 981 bodies of civilians, of which one hundred are children between three months and ten years. All this is official. There have, of course, been exaggerations, but how many horrors are still unknown!

"There were just such ma.s.sacres at Audennes, Vise, Louvain, Aerschot and Termonde, not to speak of the smaller villages, and J. told me when he pa.s.sed through here to join the army that in going through Dinant between Aisny and Philippeville there was not one village that had not been completely destroyed. At Liegnon (the station where one leaves the train in going to Conjoux) they imprisoned 900 peasants in a church for seventeen days. No one was allowed to go in. Two women were confined and were unable to have a doctor. The cure of Lorinnes, near Conjoux, had his lungs pulled out on each side with the hooks that are used for the tires of motor cars. I could go on telling you of just such incidents for pages and pages.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CHaTEAU OF ARDENNE.]

"The Chateau of Ardenne, which had become the property of the State through the gift of Leopold II, has been completely emptied. There is not one piece of furniture left, nor a frame, nor a picture; everything is gone, and this is the case in many chateaux.

"At Ghent my family have suffered a great deal from the presence of the enemy in their homes. I have already told you of their installing the pa.s.sport office in our grandfather's drawing room; you remember the one where the picture hung and the chests that belonged to Marie Antoinette. You may imagine the filth, and they insisted on putting in gas, saying it was so dark they could not see. It is true it was dark, but they had no right to ruin everything. It is curious that our grandfather still has papers giving an account of the Cossacks'

sojourn in 1814. In the very same house, a Russian colonel was lodger. According to these papers, there were far fewer injuries and complaints than in 1914 against the Germans. At Laeken, in the royal chateau, the Germans held a veritable orgy and ruined everything; such dirt; and horrors so ign.o.ble that I dare not describe it further. The fact is that everything in that beautiful chateau is in a deplorable condition.

"The Germans hope to demoralize us by circulating false reports. Every day despatches from the Kaiser announcing their victories are posted on the walls of the towns; this also to encourage their troops. The soldiers arriving in Ghent think they are within a few miles of London. The people have naturally taken a mischievous delight in undeceiving them and telling them they were by no means near London, but near the Yser. They actually wept, for the Yser is their nightmare, and with reason. That is easily understood. They do not advance; quite the contrary.

CROWN PRINCE LEOPOLD, DUC DE BRABANT.

"The King and Queen are still at La Panne. Little Prince Leopold, thirteen years old, is with them now. The other day all three on horseback reviewed the new recruits on the beach; all the time the German aeroplanes were throwing bombs.

"We have a new army of 200,000 men, and it increases every day.

The spirit of the troops is excellent. The other day the Queen went with little Prince Leopold as far as the second line of trenches to see the soldiers. It was near Nieuport. She sat down amongst them, and after she left the soldiers made a little sanctuary of the spot where she had sat. Our sovereigns are adored by their troops, and they well deserve it. Nothing matters to them--neither suffering, fatigue, danger nor money, for they are wonderfully generous. Nearly all the Relief Societies for Refugees in Belgium, here in Holland, in England, and in France have had gifts from them, and in some cases they have been considerable. It is thought now that the barbarity of the Germans and their cruelty has ceased since they have been stopped at the Yser, but this is not so. Naturally ma.s.sacres are less systematic than during the first three months of the war, but there are constantly peasants and civilians shot and priests sent to Germany. At Cortemarch (near Roulers) they sent the cure and the vicar to Germany because they accused the village of having had a spy. This they posted themselves in all the Flemish towns. The number of people who have had to pay ransom for one or another _soi-disant_ reason is countless. Our cousin, living at Wielt, has been imprisoned and forced to pay one thousand marks fine for daring to lift his voice feebly against the requisitions, without even payment by note, that were levied on the farmers.

"The Germans have now forbidden disinterment of the bodies, as the proof of their cruelty was too obvious. At the time of the flight of our poor population here the little children, seeing the Dutch soldiers dressed in gray, took them for Germans, and lifted up their little arms as these latter had obliged them to do. There are still in Holland 250,000 poor refugees. They are nearly all settled in camps of wood which in the beginning were very bad, but are improving now every day. After the taking of Antwerp there were one million here for one or two months.

"My brothers are well, thank G.o.d.--Pray.--Let us pray together if you will, for all. G.o.d will hear us and will give us the joy of acclaiming our King in Brussels when he reenters at the head of his army. It is the goal and dream of all the Belgians.

It will be a day of wild and mad delirium. It gives me the shivers even to dream of it."

From the son of Dr. Depage to his mother while she was lecturing in America:--

"April.

"La Panne[16] has changed a great deal these last few weeks.

The tourist that would come here would think himself in an exhibition, just before opening day.

[16] The Belgian army retired from Antwerp to La Panne.

"On all sides one sees tents that spring from the ground. The floors would make fine skating rinks when the war is over.

"Truly the medical career is full of surprises, and I sometimes ask myself if my father, who as a youngster poached in the Foret de Soignes, ever thought or even dreamed that he would one day be not only a great doctor, but a superior officer in the Belgian army.

"Life is a strange thing, Mother dearie, but I think that it can be very beautiful, if one understands it,--and also very sad.

"As to the war, the wounded are taking the illusion from us that we are having a vacation at the seaside.

"The weather has been so beautiful since the first day of spring that one is sometimes surprised not to see parasols of flaming colours, and the silhouettes of pretty women walking on the beach, or to see happy children building forts, which the incoming tide soon destroys. Alas!

are we not all big children, we Belgians, that resist the incoming tide, and our forts no better or stronger? But I think the tide is high now, and soon it will go down.

"As to Y. P---- I think that we must give up all hope of seeing him again. We thought for a while he was a prisoner, but though we tried to find him we could not. And then, he would have let his mother have news from him, don't you think?--since the 22d of October.

"We must not think of him now, we must remain courageous and keep on hoping.

"After the war, it will be time to count the s.p.a.ces in our ranks, and I fear there will be many. My comrade was killed in our first bayonet charge. (You know we fight as much as possible in pairs.) I was about to kill a German when the man begged so pleadingly for his life, saying he had a wife and children, that I faltered for a moment--in that moment he half turned and quickly killed my comrade."

"BRUSSELS--end of April.