Part 4 (2/2)
The other day I heard two people--two wizened city clerks--discussing the war in the train. ”When and how will the Germans be beaten?” asked the first. The other shrugged his shoulders and declared solemnly, while pulling at his pipe: ”The Germans? They have been beaten a long time ago! They were beaten when they set foot for the first time in Belgium.”
The remark is not new, and I daresay it was a reminiscence of some sentence picked up in a newspaper or at a popular meeting. But whoever uttered it for the first time was right. The case of Belgium has uplifted the whole moral atmosphere of the struggle. Since the first guns boomed around Liege and the first civilians were shot at Vise, a war which might have been represented, to a certain extent, as a conflict of interests, has become a conflict of principles. In a way, the Germans were beaten because, from that moment, they had to struggle against unseen and inflexible forces. Whatever you choose to call them--democratic instinct, Christian aspiration, or the conscience of the civilised world--they will do their work relentlessly, every day of the year, every hour of the day. It is their doing that, in spite of the immense financial influence and the most active propaganda, Germany has become unpopular all over the world. Other facts, like the _Lusitania_, the trial of Miss Cavell, the work accomplished by Zeppelins, have contributed to provoke this feeling. But whether we consider the origin or the last exploits of German policy, whether we think of two years ago or of to-day, the image of Belgium, of her invasion, of her martyrdom, of her oppression, of her deportations, dominates the spiritual aspect of the whole war.
When they crossed the Belgian frontier, the Germans walked straight into a bog, and since then they have been sucked deeper and deeper into the mud of their own misdeeds and calumnies. They were ankle-deep at Liege, waist-deep at Louvain, the bog rises even to their lips to-day. In the desperate efforts which they make to free themselves they inflict fresh and worse tortures on their victims. It is as if victory could only be reached through the country's willing sacrifice. But every cry which the Germans provoke in the Belgian prison is heard throughout the world, every tear shed there fills their bitter cup, every drop of blood they shed falls back on their own heads. The world looks on, and its burning pity, its ardent sympathy, brings warmth and comfort to the Belgian slave. There is still some light s.h.i.+ning through the narrow window of the cell. And there is not a man worthy of the name who does not feel more resolute and more confident in final victory when he meets the haggard look of the martyred country and watches her pale, patient, and still smiling face pressed against the iron bars.
VI.
THE OLIVE BRANCH.
We may ask ourselves if it was by chance only or through some subtle calculation that the first slave-raids in Belgium were timed to take place on the eve of the Christmas season, when the angels proclaimed ”good-will towards men,” and when the German diplomats offered us the olive branch and the dove--peace at their own price. We may perhaps admit, now that the crisis is over, that for us Belgians at least the temptation was great, and if our repeated experience of the enemy had not shown us that he is most dangerous when he dons the humanitarian garb, we might have been duped by this remarkable piece of stage-management. There is every reason to believe that the deportations were part and parcel of the German peace manoeuvre. By increasing a hundredfold the ”horrors of war” Germany provided a powerful argument to the pacifists all the world over: ”Look at these miserable Belgians.
Have they not suffered enough? Is it not time that an end should be put to their misery? Germany has declared that she is ready to evacuate the country. She might even give an indemnity. What other satisfaction can the Allies ask, considering the present situation on both the Eastern and Western fronts? If England really went to war to deliver Belgium, let her prove it now by stopping the struggle to spare her innocent citizens. It is all very well for those who are living comfortably at home to urge the continuance of the struggle. But can they take the responsibility of speaking on behalf of the population which has to submit to the enemy's rule and whose sufferings increase every day? ...”
We have all listened to that voice. The Belgians in exile more intensely perhaps than the other Allies. Belgium had nothing whatever to do with the origin of the quarrel. She had nothing to gain from its conclusion.
She had been drawn unwillingly into the conflict. She has taken arms merely to defend her rights and territory. What should her answer be if Germany offered to restore them?
At the beginning of August last, a certain number of Socialist leaders, in occupied Belgium, succeeded in arranging a meeting, in spite of German regulations, and pa.s.sed the following resolution, which they sent to the Minister Vandervelde, in London: ”The Belgian working cla.s.ses are decided to endure all sufferings rather than to accept a German peace, which could neither be lasting nor final. The Allies must not think that they must hasten the conclusion of the struggle for us. We are not asking for peace, and we take no responsibility for the Socialist manifestations made in neutral countries on our behalf. _We ask those who want to help us not to let the idea that we long for peace influence their decisions_. We pa.s.s this resolution in order to prevent the disastrous effect, which such an argument might produce.”
The Belgium people has never departed from this att.i.tude, and it is the plain duty of all those who are defending them, to conform, in the spirit and in the letter, to their heroic message. In the ”Appeal” of the Belgian workers to the civilised world, sent during the worst period of the slave-raids, the idea of a truce is not even entertained. On the contrary, the workers declare that, ”whatever their tortures may be, they will not have peace without the independence of their country and the triumph of justice.” An eye-witness of the raids was telling me, a few days ago, that, on some occasions, the men in the slave trains are able to communicate with the people outside: ”They shout, of course, 'Long live Belgium' and 'Long live King Albert,' but the most frequent cry, in which they seem to put their last ounce of strength, is: 'Do not sign,' which means: 'Do not sign an engagement to work in Germany, do not sign a compromise.'” And I have not the slightest doubt that, if they had heard of the German peace offers, they would still shout, ”Do not sign, do not sign a German peace!”
We know what this att.i.tude costs them. We know, from the report of those few men who have been sent back to Belgium from the Western front and from the German camps, the tortures to which the modern slaves are being subjected. These men were so ill, so worn out, that their family scarcely recognised them, and greeted them with tears, not with laughter. It was like a procession of ghosts coming back from h.e.l.l. At Soltau, the prisoners are given only two pints of acorn soup and a mouldy piece of bread, every day. They are so famished that they creep at night to steal the potato parings which their German guards throw on to--the rubbish heap. They divide them amongst themselves and eat them raw to appease their hunger. After the first week of this regime, several men went mad. Others were isolated for a few days and given excellent food. ”Will you sign now? If you do, you shall be kept on the same diet; if not... you go back to camp?” The great majority refused ... and were sent back. This is not an isolated report. All the accounts agree, even on the smallest details, and the deportees who have been able to write to their families tell the same story as those who, being henceforth useless, have been sent home to die.
It has always been the German policy to bully and to cajole almost at the same time. But the image of Germania offering, with her sweetest humanitarian smile, an olive-branch to the Allies whilst her executioners are starving thousands of Belgian slaves and clubbing them with their rifles, will stand in the memory of mankind as the climax of combined brutality and hypocrisy.
Should we wonder if the present has been refused? There is only one peace which matters, it is the peace of man with his own conscience, the peace of the soul with its G.o.d. We have it already, and even the roar of the German guns will not disturb it. It hovers over our trenches, over the sea, even over these terrible German camps where the best blood of a great people is being sucked by the vampires of War. And those who have fallen stricken on the battlefields, those who have succ.u.mbed to the slow tortures to which they were subjected, are resting now under its great wings. Should we dare to disturb their sleep? Should we dare to stain their glory?
It is not for Germany to offer peace. She has lost, it with her honour.
It lies in some pool, at the corner of a wood, where the hooligan waits in ambush, or on the rubbish heap of the Soltau camp in which men--n.o.ble men--are made to seek their food like pigs. Germany cannot offer what is not hers to offer. The Allies cannot take what they have already. For there is only one peace, ”the peace that pa.s.seth all understanding.”
As for the German olive branch, how could we accept it? It is no longer green. There is a drop of blood on every leaf.
It is perfectly useless to try, as has been done in certain quarters, to distinguish between Belgium's att.i.tude in the conflict and that of the Powers who are fighting for the restoration of her integrity. From the day when England, France and Russia answered King Albert's appeal, the unflinching policy of Belgium has been to act in perfect harmony with the Allies. How could it be otherwise? Their cause is her cause. Their victory will be her victory, and--if we should ever consider the possibility of defeat--their defeat would be her defeat. The Belgians who like myself, were in England during these fateful days of August, 1914, when the destiny of Europe hung in the balance, know perfectly well the decisive influence which the invasion of Belgium had on English public opinion at that time. Nothing can ever blur the clear outlines of the events as they pa.s.sed before us under the implacable rays of that glorious summer sun.
The whole policy of Germany is determined by her first stroke in the war. That stroke was delivered against a small nation. The whole policy of England and of the Allies is determined by their first efforts in the struggle, and these efforts were made to protect a small nation against Germany's aggression. Never has the choice between right and wrong been made plainer in the whole history of the world.
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