World's War Events Volume II Part 21

Butchers and bakers and provision dealers had to shut their shops, and the town became almost wholly dependent on supplies brought in by the American Relief Commission. Fresh meat was soon un.o.btainable, except by those few people who could afford to pay fabulous prices for joints smuggled across the frontier. Months ago meat cost 32 francs a kilogram (about 13 shillings a pound) and an egg cost 1 franc 25 (a shilling).

Obviously such things were beyond the reach of the bulk of the people, and had it not been for the efforts of the Relief Commission we should all have starved.

[Sidenote: Foodstuffs supplied by the Relief Commission.]

The commission opened a food depot, a local committee issued tickets for the various articles, and rich and poor alike had to wait their turn at the depot to procure the allotted rations. The chief foodstuffs supplied were: Rice, flaked maize, bacon, lard, coffee, bread, condensed milk (occasionally), haricot beans, lentils, and a very small allowance of sugar. Potatoes could not be bought at any price.

[Sidenote: The Germans intercept mine food.]

Unfortunately, though I regret that I should have to record it, there is evidence that by some means or other the German Army contrived to intercept for itself a part of the food sent by the American Commission.

One who had good reason to know told me that more than once trainloads which, according to a notification sent to him, had left Brussels for Roubaix failed to arrive. I know also that a.n.a.lysis of the bread showed that in some cases German rye flour, including 30 per cent of sawdust, had been subst.i.tuted for the white American flour, producing an indigestible putty-like substance which brought illness and death to many. Indeed, the mortality from this cause was so heavy at one period that all the grave diggers in the town could not keep pace with it.

[Sidenote: Germans eager to buy food.]

One could easily understand how great must have been the temptation to the Germans to tap for themselves the food which friends abroad had sent for their victims. It is a significant fact that soldiers in Roubaix were eager to buy rice from those who had obtained it at the depot at four francs (3s 4d) the pound in order, as they said, "to send it home."

I shall describe later how utterly different were the conditions in Belgium as I saw them.

Meagre as were the food supplies for the civilians in Roubaix, those issued to the German soldiers toward the end of my stay were little better.

At first the householders, on whom the soldiers were billeted, were required to feed them and to recover the cost from the munic.i.p.al authorities.

[Sidenote: Change of demeanor of soldiery.]

Of all the things I saw and heard in Roubaix and Lille none impressed me more than the wonderful change which came over the outlook and demeanor of the German soldiery between October, 1914, and October, 1915.

I had many opportunities of mingling with them, more, in fact, than I cared to have, for now and again during this period two or three of them were actually billeted on the good folk with whom I lodged.

[Sidenote: Already tired of war.]

I knew just sufficient of the German language to be able to chat with them, and they made no attempt to conceal from me their real feelings. I am merely repeating the statement made to me over and over again by many German soldiers when I say that the men in the ranks are thoroughly tired of the war, that they have abandoned all thought of conquest, and that they fight on only because they believe that their homes and families are at stake.

On that Autumn morning when the first German troops came into Roubaix they came flushed with victory, full of confidence in their strength, marching with their eyes fixed on Paris and London. They sang aloud as they swung through our streets. They sing no more. Instead, as I saw with my own eyes, many of them show in their faces the abject misery which is in their hearts.

[Sidenote: Expect end of war in November, 1916.]

Last year scores of them told me, quite independently, that the war would come to an end on November 17, 1916. How that date came to be fixed by the prophets n.o.body knew, but the belief in the prophecy was universal among the soldiers.

[Sidenote: Soldiers more courteous than officers.]

As a rule, the soldiers did not maltreat the civilians in Roubaix, except when they were acting under the orders of their officers; when, for example, they were tearing people from their homes to work as slaves. They had, however, the right of traveling without payment on the tramcars, and they frequently exercised this right to such an extent as to preclude the townsfolk from the use of the cars.

[Sidenote: Officers requisition supplies.]

Apart from that annoyance, there was little ground for complaint of the general behavior of the soldiers. The conduct of the officers was very different. For a long time they made a habit of requisitioning from shopkeepers and others supplies of food for which they had no intention of paying. One day an officer drove up in a trap to a shop kept by an acquaintance of mine and "bought" sardines, chocolate, bread, and fancy cakes to the value of about 200 francs (about $40). He produced a piece of paper and borrowed a pair of scissors with which to cut off a slip.

On this slip he wrote a few words in German, and then, handing it to the shopkeeper, he went off with his purchases. The shopkeeper, on presenting the paper at the Kommandantur, was informed that the inscription ran, "For the loan of scissors, 200 francs," and that the signature was unknown. Payment was therefore refused. This case, I believe, was by no means an isolated one.

When an officer was billeted on a house, he would insist on turning the family out of the dining room and drawing room and sleeping in the best bedroom; sometimes he would eject people entirely from their home.

[Sidenote: A docile private soldier.]

By contrast the docile private soldier was almost a welcome guest. I remember well one quite friendly fellow who was lodged for some time in the same house as myself and some English over military age in the suburb of Croix. He came to me in great glee one day with a letter from his wife in which she warned him to beware of "the English cutthroats."

She went on to give him a long series of instructions for his safety. He was to barricade his bedroom door every night, to sleep always with his knife under his pillow, and never to take anything we offered him to eat or drink.

[Sidenote: Few civilian offenses.]

Despite the temptations to crime and insubordination which naturally attend an idle manufacturing population of some 125,000 people, there were very few civilian offenses against the law, German or French, among the inhabitants of Roubaix.

[Sidenote: Time hangs heavily.]

Time hung heavily on our hands. Cut off from the outer world except by the occasional arrival of smuggled French and English newspapers, we spent our time reading and playing cards, and at the last I hoped I might never be reduced to this form of amus.e.m.e.nt again. In the two and a half years cut out of my life and completely wasted I played as many games of cards as will satisfy me for the rest of my existence.

[Sidenote: The gendarmerie called "Green devils."]

But even if the inhabitants, in their enforced idleness, had any temptation to be insubordinate, they had a far greater inducement to keep the law in the bridled savagery of the German gendarmerie. These creatures, who from the color of their uniform and the brutality of their conduct were known as the "green devils," seemed to revel in sheer cruelty. They scour the towns on bicycles and the outlying districts on horseback, always accompanied by a dog as savage as his master, and at the slightest provocation or without even the slenderest pretext they fall upon civilians with brutish violence.

[Sidenote: Women badly treated.]

It was not uncommon for one of these men to chase a woman on his bicycle, and when he had caught her, batter her head and body with the machine. Many times they would strike women with the flat of their sabres. One of them was seen to unleash his dog against an old woman, and laugh when the savage beast tore open the woman's flesh from thigh to knee.

[Sidenote: Crossing Belgium.]

In January Mr. Whitaker crossed the line into Belgium with the aid of smuggler friends, traversed that country, chiefly on foot, and two months later escaped into Holland and so to England. In Belgium he was astonished to find what looked like prosperity when compared with conditions in the occupied provinces of France. After expressing grat.i.tude to Belgian friends and a desire to tell only what is truth, he proceeds:

[Sidenote: No sign of privations.]

The first fact I have to declare is that nowhere in my wanderings did I see any sign of starvation. Nowhere did I notice such privation of food as I had known in Northern France. Near the French frontier, it is true, the meals I took in inns and private cottages were far from sumptuous, but as I drew nearer to the Dutch frontier the amount and variety of the food to be obtained changed in an ascending scale, until at Antwerp one could almost forget, so far as the table was concerned, that the world was at war.

[Sidenote: The diet at Roubaix, France.]

Let me give a few comparisons. At Roubaix, in France, at the time when I left in the first week of this year, my daily diet was as follows: Breakfast--coffee, bread and b.u.t.ter (b.u.t.ter was a luxury beyond the reach of the working people, who had to be content with lard); midday meal--vegetable soup, bread, boiled rice, and at rare intervals an egg or a tiny piece of fresh meat; supper--boiled rice and bread. Just over the border, in Belgium, the food conditions were a little better. The ticket system prevailed, and the villagers were dependent on the depots of the American Relief Commission, supplemented by local produce.

A little further, and one pa.s.sed the line of demarkation between the etape--the part of Belgium which is governed by General von Denk, formerly commanding the troops at Valenciennes--and the governement general, under the command of General von Bissing.

[Sidenote: The first fresh meat in weeks.]

Here a distinct change was noticeable. My first meal in this area included fillet of beef, the first fresh meat I had tasted for weeks.

Tickets were still needed to buy bread and other things supplied by the Relief Commission, but other foodstuffs could be bought without restriction.

[Sidenote: A dinner at Brussels.]

At Brussels the food supply seems to be nearly normal. My Sunday dinner there consisted of excellent soup, a generous helping of roast leg of mutton, potatoes, haricot beans, white bread, cheese, and jam, and wine or beer, as preferred; while for supper I had cold meat, fried potatoes, and bread.

[Sidenote: Food conditions at Antwerp.]

At Antwerp, with two French friends who accompanied me on my journey through Belgium, I walked into a middle-cla.s.s cafe at midday. I ordered a steak with fried potatoes and my friends ordered pork chops. Without any question about tickets we were served. We added bread, cheese, and b.u.t.ter to complete the meal and washed it down with draft light beer.

Later in the day we took supper in the same cafe--an egg omelette, fried potatoes, bread, cheese, and b.u.t.ter. And the cost of both meals together was less than the cost of the steak alone in Roubaix.

[Sidenote: Appearance of Brussels.]