THE TRAGEDY OF BELGIUM

New Zealand Herald, Volume LII, Issue 15884, 3 April 1915, Page 5 (Supplement)

THE TRAGEDY OF BELGIUM

UNDER THE GERMAN ' HEEL. POLICY OF NATIONAL SUFFOCATION. How Belgium fares under German rule is simply and soberly related in the London 'limes by a neutral citizen—an Amen-an —who was recently permitted to visit iho country. He says that King Albert and his soldiers are not the only Belgians liiihtini: for the lause of the. allies. Some 7.000.000 of Belgian* at home are also liclitiim. ami they .no naming the war with mind and .-pun. Belgium to-day is an unshaken unit of defiance oi German rule. Belgian nationalism i- a fart, and defeat and suffering have only served to strengthen the Belgians' love of their King and ot all the pmc ;ph> le incarnates. " War is war'' to the Hermans, who claim that their calculated reprisal.- ami punishment have stopped sniping. Some innocent lives may have been taken, b'lt their defence is that thereby they saved many thousands of their soldiers and thou sands upon thousands of Belgians, and prevented the fued between the rulers and too ruled from becoming more embittered. Sniping over, the next step in German policy was to keep the population quiet, with a minimum of soldiery, which would permit a maximum at the front. Prisoners in Their Own Land. "The occupation is strictly military." lie writes. "it com em? iUeil with the business of national suffocation. Ail the hin<tmns of the national government are in (Inman hands. Hut Belgian pnliceme i guide the stieet traffic, arrest tulprits f.-r ordinal v misdemeanours, and take them before Belgian judges. 'Ibis concession, which also means a saving in soldiers, only aggravates to the Belcian the regula lions directed against his fieedi.m. Whereas refugees departed freely from Louvam in August and from Antwerp in October, because their, movement could not be iontrolled, now Belgians only In exceptional instances may leave their country. They are prisoners in their own land. They may not go from one town to another ; I they may not use the telephone or the telegraph: they may write letters only through the Herman military post: they may not use their own railroad system as passengers or for parcel transport. Belgians seen walking across the fields are hailed by a Landsturm guard. They may walk only in the streets and go to their shops and offices within the radius of their own communities. The psychological effect of this is appreciable only after it is endured. One might be quite content for a week within the confines of his own house aid garden, but the moment a sentry' with a bayonet appeared at the gate with word that one could not go to the post office or to call on a neighbour across the street, one's own house and garden become a gaol. The Belgians are prisoners who shame, outwit, and pinprick their gaolers in a kind of warfare more efficacious than sniping, in which both sexes and all ages have become expert through a merciless apprenticeship. Any Belgian, unless ho « be a Belgian official, who lias dealings or social relations with a German is proscribed by his class. Should a German officer sit down at the same tajile in a cafe or restaurant with a Belgian, the . Belgian takes another seat. If an officer enters a tram, women draw back m that their garments will not touch his, as if they would escape vermin. One officer who lost his temper on such an occasion exclaimed : ' Madam';, I shall not contaminate you'.' Her only reply was to , look at the officer's coat and draw a little. farther away. Belgians Lost to Kultur. "The German officer and every German soldier in Belgium is the mouthpiece of propaganda for the polity which succeeded that of Louvaiu, alter " tcrrorisation 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. Tho British used Belgian as a cat's-paw; then they deserted her. But the Belgians remain unconvinced. The rulers cannot understand why the Belgians should not like them. Occasionally they break out in disgust at the failure of their efforts by declaring that ' the Belgians are a vile, worthless, tricky people, who ought to be wiped off tho face of the earth,' as a fitting fate for anyone who cannot appreciate the benefit of going iuto the hopper of the wonderful machine of German paternalism. Belgian Humour. " Belgium is developing a new humour; a humour at the expense of the Germans, the only kind of humour for which Belgians have any heart. In their homes they mimic their rulers freely as they . please. To carry mimicry into the streets means arrest for the elders, but not always for the children. You have heard the story, which is true, of how sumo gamins put carrots in old bowler hats to represent the spikes of German helmets, and at their leader's command of 'On to Paris' did a goosestep backwards. There is another which you may have not heard of a small boy who put on grandfather's spectacles, a pillow under his coat, and a card on his cap, ' Officer ot the Landsturm ' The conquerors had enough sense not to interfere with the battalion which was taking Paris; but the pseudo-Land-sturm officer was chased into a doorway and got a cuff after bis placard was taken awav from him. " Must of the Belgians, wearing black, vellow and red. or King Albert's portrait 'in their buttonholes, pass by the German patrols or sentries in front of public buildings without seeming to see them. When an order was issued that Belgian colours or the King's portrait should not be displayed, the next day they were as conspicuously for sale in the shops as ever, and main Belgians replied by wearing a. seiond button with the portrait of the Queen, a Bavarian, beside that of the King, or bv adding the King's portrait to the "colours' where thev bad worn only a single emblem. At mass, in Brussels. I saw an enormous Belgian flag draped on a. standard in the centre of a church. Authority might not tear down the symbol of patriotism ' when safeguarded by a religious service. •' What a puffing and rushing about for the Landsturm if they had tried to enforce the order against flags and buttons! No sooner would thev have cleared tho buttonhols of a Belgian in front than the colours would have appeared in a buttonhole at the rear. If all offenders were arrested the gaols of Germany could not hold them. Confidence in the Future. ••With their whispered satire, with lips stiff with scorn, with glances of contempt, I with everv 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 111 tho I face and bread fn.ni America gives them the strength to go on. They have sufI fered most of all the allies tor the allies cause It looks as if they have to starve for it We 1 onto to the problem of how a. country dependent on the food it bought "with its industrv is to live if the allies do not break open the doors with victory. • It docs seem nearer " people in Brussels keep savins when they hear gun-fire. There is' something pitiful and something fine in their confidence and lnyaltv. They have mi doubt that Sir John French is coining. England, they think, is invincible. As thev see German officers in Hying automobiles, and as they obey with their bodies but not their minds, they dream of that day when their King shall mount the steps of bis palace and khaki columns march through the streets singing 'Tip- ■ pcrary!' "