Part 4 (2/2)

”But certainly, messieurs, that is what I am here for. Not the window loaves, however; I have a fresh loaf, if you please. Also a little cheese, if you will.”

”Were you here in the fighting?”

”a.s.suredly not! It was impossible. But I hurried back after three days.

You see, messieurs, some people were returning, and me--I am the Baker of Lierre.”

He said it as if it were a t.i.tle of n.o.bility.

At Malines (Mechelen) the devastation appeared perhaps more shocking because we had known the russet and gray old city so well in peaceful years. Many of the streets were impa.s.sable, choked with debris. One side of the great Square was knocked to fragments. The huge belfry, Saint Rombaud's Tower, wherein hangs the famous carillon of more than thirty bells, was battered but still stood firm. The vast cathedral was a melancholy wreck of its former beauty and grandeur. The roof was but a skeleton of bare rafters; the side wall pierced with gaping rents and holes; the pictured windows were all gone; the sunlight streamed in everywhere upon the stone floor, strewn with an indescribable confusion of shattered gla.s.s, fallen beams, fragments of carved wood, and broken images of saints.

A little house behind the Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, the roof and upper story of which had been pierced by sh.e.l.ls, seemed to be occupied. We knocked and went in. The man and his wife were in the sitting-room, trying to put it in order. Much of the furniture was destroyed; the walls were pitted with shrapnel-scars, but the cheap ornaments on the mantel were unbroken. In the ceiling was a big hole, and in the floor a pit in which lay the head and fragments of a German sh.e.l.l. I asked if I might have them. ”Certainly,” answered the man. ”We wish to keep no souvenirs of that wicked thing.”

V

I do not propose to describe the magnificent work of the ”Commission for Relief in Belgium.” It is too well known. Besides, it is not my story; it is the story of Herbert Hoover, who made the idea a reality, and of the crew of fine and fearless young Americans who worked with him.

England and France furnished more money to buy food; but the United States, in addition to money and wheat, gave the organization, the personal energy and toil and tact, the a.s.surance of fair play and honest dealing, without which that food could never have gotten into Belgium or been distributed only to the civil population.

Holland was the door through which all the supplies for the C. R. B. had to pa.s.s. The first two cargoes that went in I had to put through personally, and nearly had to fight to do it. My job was to keep the back of the United States against that door and hold it open. It was not always easy. I was obliged to make protests, remonstrances, and polite suggestions about what would happen if certain things were not done.

Once the Germans refused to give any more ”safe-conduct pa.s.ses” for relief s.h.i.+ps on the return voyage. Of course, that would have made the work impossible. A German aircraft bombed one of these s.h.i.+ps. I put the matter mildly but firmly to the German Minister. ”This work is in your interest. It relieves you from the burden of feeding a lot of people whom you would otherwise be bound to feed. You want it to go on?” ”Yes, certainly, by all means.” ”Well, then, you will have to stop attacking the C. R. B. s.h.i.+ps or else the work will have to stop. The case is very simple. There is only one thing to do.” He promised to take the matter up with Berlin at once. In a couple of days the answer came: ”Very sorry. Regrettable mistake. Aviator could not see markings on side and stern of s.h.i.+p. Advise large horizontal signs painted on top deck of s.h.i.+ps, visible from above. Safe-conducts will be granted.”

When this was told to Captain White, a clever Yankee sea-captain who had general charge of the C. R. B. s.h.i.+pping, he laughed considerably and then said: ”Why, look-a-here, I'll paint those boats all over, top, sides, and bottom, if that'll only keep the ---- Germans from sinkin'

'em.”

From a million and a half to two million men, women, and children in Belgium and northern France were saved from starving to death by the work of the C. R. B. The men who were doing it had a chance to observe the conditions in those invaded countries. They came to the Legation at The Hague and told simply what they knew. We got the real story of Miss Cavell, cruelly done to death by ”field-gray” officers. We got full descriptions of the system of deporting the civil population--a system which amounted to enslavement, with a taint of ”white slavery” thrown in. When the Belgian workmen were suddenly called from their homes, herded before the German commandant, and sent away, they knew not whither, to work for their oppressor, as they were entrained they sang the ”Ma.r.s.eillaise.” They knew they would be punished for it, kept without food, put to the hardest labor. But they sang it. They knew that France, and England too, were fighting for them, for their rights, for their liberty. They believed that it would come. They were not conquered yet.

Here I must break off my story for a month. It has not been well told.

Words cannot render the impression of black horror that lay upon us, the fierce indignation that stirred us, during all those months while we were doing the tasks of peace in peaceful Holland.

We were bound to be neutral in conduct. That was the condition of our service to the wounded, the prisoners, the refugees, the sufferers, of both sides. We lived up to that condition at The Hague without a single criticism from anybody--except the subsidized German-American press in the United States.

But to be neutral in thought and feeling--ah, that was beyond my power.

I knew that the predatory Potsdam gang had chosen and forced the war in order to realize their robber-dream of Pan-Germanism. I knew that they were pus.h.i.+ng it with unheard-of atrocity in Belgium and northern France, in Poland and Servia and Armenia. I knew that they had challenged and attacked the whole world of peace-loving nations. I knew that America belonged to that imperilled world. I knew that there could be no secure labor and no quiet sleep in any land so long as the Potsdam Werwolf was at large.

Chapter IV GERMANIA MENDAX

I

The truth about the choosing, beginning, and forcing of this abominable war has never been told by official Germandom.

Now and then an independent German like Maximilian Harden is brave enough to blurt it out: ”Of what use are weak excuses? We willed this war, ... willed it because we were sure we could win it.” (Zukunft, August, 1914.) But in general the official spokesmen of Germany keep up the claim that their country was attacked and forced to fly to arms to protect herself.

”Gentlemen,” said the Imperial Chancellor to the members of the Reichstag on August 4,1914, ”we are now acting in self-defense.

Necessity knows no law. Our troops have occupied Luxembourg and have possibly already entered on Belgian soil. [A little earlier in the speech he confessed that they had also invaded France.] Gentlemen, that is a breach of international law. The French Government has notified Brussels that it would respect Belgian neutrality as long as the adversary respected it. But we know that France stood ready for an invasion. France could wait. We could not .... The injustice we commit--I speak openly--we will try to make good as soon as our military aims have been attained. He who is menaced as we are, and is fighting for his all, can only consider the one and best way to strike.”

[Footnote 1] (The word which Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg actually used was ”durchhauen”, which means ”to hew, or hack, a way through.”)

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