THE SIGN OF THE RED CROSS
Weno longer inhabit a cheerful Belgian village. In an unaccustomed country we must train ourselves to meet new laws. On Sunday we go to church. After service from the good Curé, M. le Directeur reads out to us a list of rules.
We must not collect in crowds, nor speak more than three in the village street.
We must not hide in the houses, but go about our ordinary avocations when the soldiers pass, or they will suspect a plot.
We must never run away—unless we want a bullet in the back—but throw up our hands when called upon to do so.
We must never do this and we must remember that, or we may expect to be bowled over as lightly as the wood blocks in that skittle alley which is the “distraction” of the Ardennois Sunday.
A German officer has frankly told us that the very smallest reprisal for any inimical act will be house-burning. Should a civilian dare to fire onthe German troops, well, that village may expect to be decimated of its remaining men. Besides this the Teutons do not trust our word. Twice to-day an officer has forced me to drink first from his glass of beer. The young Job-Lepouses have to do the same. A suspicious Uhlan intends to run no unnecessary risk.
No peace for the wicked! There is the air peril to contend with. A sound often heard here, like a hundred threshing machines in full swing, made me think at first that the peasants were working in the fields. The mystery is solved when glancing far, far up where sky and cloud seem to meet, an aeroplane is seen buzzing slowly overhead. Sometimes we see it near enough to recognise its white body with the black tail-planes and tips to wings. German, of course, always German. We never have any other here. I watch the machine as it begins to descend at an acute angle. A thousand feet down, it hovers for a while. Finally, it planes earthwards like some great, ominous magpie until hidden from sight in the hollow of a distant field.
“One for sorrow.”
Another machine comes sailing majestically towards us from the nebulous distance.
“Two for mirth.”
It will take us all our time to derive any amusement from these bomb-dropping fiends....
A brain-wave has passed over the village. The word “red-cross” is mentioned. M. le Directeur suggests with admirable sense that the inn should be turned into a hospital for the wounded soldiers. Wonderful the enthusiasm this idea has evoked. Extraordinary the unanimity with which it is received by the peasants.
M. le Précepteur wishes to hang a flag out of his window too. His step becomes more elastic, his expression brighter at the mere idea. This seems to him an opportune way of staving off the awful, possible hour of arrest. He is actuated, too, by that beautiful sense of compassion which makes the Belgian nature so attractive.
The burnt-out old lady is quite vociferous with joy at the prospect of nursing the enemy. It never occurs to her that she will thereby heap coals of fire on the miscreants who so basely tried to destroy her little home. At this moment she is sitting out in the potato-patch industriously picking over the flock in her mattress. The adjacent hedge is hung with odds and ends of half-burnt coverlets and clothes. I know she is scheming inher generous Walloon brain how much of her slender household stock can be spared for the use of the wounded soldiers.
These flags—the great red cross on the white ground—are produced in the shortest space of time. We breathe more freely when they float out majestically from the hotel windows. We are as afire with first-aid enthusiasm as any ignorant sixteen-year-old Miss who has volunteered for the front. Every woman in the village has offered her help. She will insist on giving it too. I pity the first victim who arrives. He is likely to be pulled into a thousand pieces!
Scarcely any Uhlans have passed through to-day. Those who did were well behaved. This fact and the Red Cross flag have combined to make us quite jovial. The skittle alley is in use again. A group of villagers is gathered on theterrassetelling war-tales which would make our English fishermen green with envy.
One tale no one tells, however, out of respect to Madame Job. That is the tale of the Liège forts. We are all under a solemn pledge to believe that they are still intact. We know better. Anyone would know better after the awful cannonade of the last few days. But in our common humanitywe cannot bear that Madame Job should know before she must, that her Albert “in-the-forts-there-below” is dead, safe though she thought him in those forts, “the-forts-which-are-so-strong.”...