BARBED WIT

Evening Star, Issue 15777, 14 April 1915, Page 8

BARBED WIT

HOW BELGIANS ANNOY GERMANS. An American correspondent of 1 Tlie Times,’ describing the present state of Belgium under the German heel, says the Belgians are prisoners who shame, outwit, and pinprick their gaolers in a kind of warfare more efficacious than sniping, in which both si-xes and all ages have become expert through a .merciless apprenticeship. Any Belgian, unless he be a Belgian official, who has dealings or social relations with a German is proscribed by his class. Should a German officer sit down at the same table in a cafe or restaurant with a Belgian, the Belgian takes another seat. If an officer enters a- tram women draw bark so their garments will not touch his. as if they would escape vermin. One officer who lost his temper on such an occasion exclaimed : “ Madame, 1 shall not contaminate you!” Her only reply was to look at the officer’s coat and draw a little further away. In the smaller towns, where the Germans are billeted in Belgian houses, of course the hosts must serve their unwelcome guests. “ Yet we manage to let them know what is in our heart.” said one woman. “ Some try to be friendly. They say they have wives and children at home, and wo sav ‘ How glad your wives and children would bo to see you. Why don't you go home'.' 1 ” The German officer and every German soldier in Belgium is the mouthpiece of propaganda for the policy which succeeded that of Louvain, after " terrorisation had accomplished its purpose.” They tell the Belgians at every opportunity that the English and the French can never come to their rescue. The Allies are beaten; Paris and Warsaw will soon fall; the Suez Canal will soon be in Turkish hands. It was the British who got Belgium into trouble; the British who are responsible for the idleness, the penury, the hunger, and the suffering in Belgium to-day. The British used Belgium as a cat's paw; then they deserted her. But the Belgians remain unconvinced. —A Shop Incident.— Most of the Belgians, wearing the black, yellow, and red, or King Albert’s portrait in their buttonholes, pass by the German patrols or the sentries in front of public buildings without seeming to see them. When an order .was issued that Belgian colors or the King's portrait should not be displayed, the next day they were as conspicuously for sale in the shops as ever, and many Belgians replied by wearing a second button with the portrait of the Queen, a Bavarian, beside that of the King, or by adding the King’s portrait to the colors where they had worn only a single emblem. At Mass in Brussels I saw an enormous Belgian flag draped on a &taxidax<l in. -tins ot a. cKurch. Authority might not tear down the symbol of patriotism when safeguarded by a religious service. A German officer entering a shop to buy a cigar and finding the King’s portrait on the walls exclaimed: 1 Don't you know that is forbidden? Yes. monsieur. Then why do you leave it up. Because I love my King. Don't you love your Kaiser? Yon wouldn't love him any the less if he were in trouble, would you ? Tire officer took his cigar, and left the shop without further comment. —How the Artisan Scores.— Germans may force Belgians into the mines, as they have at Liege, or to other fdrms cf manual labor under guards. But the bayonet fails with the skilled artisan. The repairing of a German official automobile would hardly be risked at a Belgian garage. That automobile would likely break down before it was far along the road; and how could the officer riding in it prove that the mechanic at the garage was responsible for the accident ? Usually when skilled labor is required there are no skilled Belgians to be found. Belgians refuse to work in the arms factories or any other factories which produce material of war for the enemy. With their whispered satire, with lips stiff with scorn, with glances of contempt, with every resource of civilised man’s wit and stubbornness, and the force of the mass of their millions, they are fighting while economic ruin stares them in the face and bread from America gives them the strength to go on. They have suffered most of all the Allies for the Allies’ cause. It looks as if they may have to starve for it. We come to the problem of how a country dependent on the food it bought with its industry is to live if the Allies do not break open the doors with victory. “It does seem nearer,” people in Brussels keep saying when they hear gun fire. There is sorneffiing pitiful and something fine in their confidence and loyalty. They have no doubt that Sir John French is coming. England, they think, is invincible. As they see German officers in flying automobiles, and as they obey with their bodice but not their minds, thev dream of that day when their King shall mount the steps of his Palace and khaki columns march through the streets singing ‘ Tipperary.’ j