CHAPTER IBELGIUM

TOLD IN GALLANT DEEDS

CHAPTER IBELGIUM

“Now tell us what ’twas all about,”Young Peterkin, he cries.And little Wilhelmine looks upWith wonder-waiting eyes;“Now tell us all about the war,And what they fought each other for?”

“Now tell us what ’twas all about,”

Young Peterkin, he cries.

And little Wilhelmine looks up

With wonder-waiting eyes;

“Now tell us all about the war,

And what they fought each other for?”

Like the children in Mr. Southey’s poem, you will want to know first of all why we joined in with France and Russia in the great war against Germany and Austria. Well, the answer in a word is—Belgium.

Supposing you had solemnly promised to protect a little kitten and afterwards a big dog came and attacked the kitten, would you not keep your promise, and do all you could to help the kitten? Of course you would. Belgium was the kitten, and Germany was the big dog.We had faithfully promised to protect the little country of Belgium, and the terrible thing is that Germany had promised too, but she broke her promise.

Germany wanted to get into France.

If you look at the map, you will see that the Germans might have tried to go straight in without touching Belgium. Only then they would have had to break through a very strong line of forts which the French had built to defend their country. The Germans did not feel sure of doing this, and they said to themselves, “The longest way round is the shortest way in.” That meant going through Belgium.

You have probably heard grown-up people, when discussing this great war, mention “a scrap of paper.” You may even have wondered what a scrap of paper could have to do with the war. I will tell you. On the dread day when our mighty country threw down the gauntlet, the German statesman who had worked hard to keep England out of Germany’s quarrel with France and Russia exclaimed, “You are going to war for a scrap of paper!” He spoke truly, but on that scrap of paperor parchment was written the solemn promise of both England and Germany to be like big brothers to Belgium and protect her from being bullied.

At first the Germans were very nice to Belgium. They said, “Only let us come through your country, and when we have conquered France we will give you a splendid reward!” But France also had promised to be a big brother to Belgium, and so Belgium said “No!”

England also said “No!” England said to Germany, “If you touch our little friend Belgium, we will fight you.”

So that is why the British Empire went to war with Germany. If we had chosen the easy way of breaking our promise by simply doing nothing, by standing out and merely looking on at the awful struggle, would we now be proud of being English? I think not.

Germany did more than break her promise to protect Belgium. When she found that the brave little country was gamely going to fight, she sent her greatarmies, hundreds of thousands of trained soldiers with fleets of aeroplanes and terrible big guns, whose shells, as they are now called, could kill people miles away. She thought she would easily be able to march through Belgium right into France, and she fully expected to capture the city of Paris—all in one month!

In fact, Germany made the worst mistake that can be made in war—the mistake of despising her enemies. She despised the power of the French armies, and she also very much despised the British Army. She had a good deal of respect for the British Navy because it is big, but because the British Army was small she thought it did not matter. Well, she was taught a richly-deserved lesson by Sir John French and his splendid troops, of whose gallant deeds you will read in this book.

Most of all, Germany despised the army of poor little Belgium. And yet the game little kitten, though suffering terribly herself, contrived to inflict some severe scratches on the big German dog. She actually held him up for quite a long time, to his great surprise and rage, and that delay was of the utmost benefit both to France and to England. It enabled them to make theirfinal preparations for serious fighting, and it gave us time to send our Army across the Channel to join up with the French forces.

Notice, also, that it would have been very useful to France to send her armies through Belgium to attack Germany. What prevented her? Just “a scrap of paper,” just her pledge and promise. She could not break her word, because it would not have been playing fair, it would have been taking a mean advantage—the same mean advantage that Germany did not hesitate to take.

But you may ask, “Why did not the French at least send plenty of soldiers to defend Belgium?” The answer is that they did offer to send more than 200,000 men. But Belgium refused. She believed that Germany would keep her written promise. “Can the Kaiser put his name to a lie?” she asked.

Terribly did Belgium suffer for her trust in German honour. But once she saw her trust was betrayed, her little army fought with splendid courage, thousands of Germans were killed in the first battles, and thanks to the splendid defence put up by the forts of a Belgiantown called Liège, she delayed the vast, oncoming German hosts till Britain and France were ready to take them on.

I am sure all of you are now familiar with the glorious name of Liège, but you may not know so well that of the hero whose name is now linked for ever with that of Liège—I mean General Leman, who conducted the splendid defence.

The flower of the German Army was hurled against the city and the forts and thirty thousand Belgians fought like lions repulsing the enemy. Great deeds of individual valour were done, and a special interest attaches to them as they were the first gallant deeds of this Great War.

Here is the story of a young soldier whose name is inscribed for ever on the Belgian roll of honour.

I must tell you that waterways, almost always very beautiful and picturesque waterways, play a great part in the life of Belgium, and much fierce fighting has goneon, as we shall see, on the banks of rivers, canals, and streams. In order to cut off the enemy, it became all important to the Belgians to cross a canal, but the bridge was up, and the mechanism was on the side held by the Germans.

A young soldier, named Tresignies, facing certain death, dived into the stream, and swam across under the German fire. He leapt up the bank of the stream, got hold of the pulley, and so lowered the bridge; but as it fell in place, he himself fell dead.

The days went on, and still Liège held out amid terrible scenes of bloodshed and heroism. Outside the forts the Belgians were not idle. Fiercely they fought the enemy, and the Germans on their side were full of pluck and of determination to conquer or die.

A fort is always built on the top of a hill or huge mound. Up the slopes of each fort the Germans advanced again and again, under a withering fire, and it was said that eight hundred men were killed within an half mile square. If valour could have taken the forts during those early days of the siege, Liège would have fallen. According to an eye-witness who has seen much of theactual fighting during the war, the enemy never fought so well as at Liège. But the enemy had a foe worthy of its steel.

An exciting and heartening incident of the fighting round Liège was the capture by a brave Belgian boy of a German general.

A day may come when some of you British boys and girls will understand why grown-up people smile when they note that this boy’s name is Jean Jacques Rousseau. For Jean Jacques Rousseau was also the name of one who, if a great thinker and writer, was not, in a physical sense, a brave man; indeed, so vivid was the original Jean Jacques Rousseau’s wonderful imagination, and so poor his courage, that he would probably have fainted with fright had he been vouchsafed a vision of his namesake’s gallant and daring deed!

The brave Jean Jacques Rousseau is only nineteen, yet he had already been a soldier for three years when at Zelk, close to Liège, he succeeded in making this officer of high rank his prisoner. The German general seems to have put up very little fight; tamely he surrendered to hiscaptor a satchel containing not only papers, but six thousand pounds in notes and gold! Jean Jacques handed over the money to the Red Cross, for its noble work of tending the wounded, but he was allowed to keep the satchel, and the General’s silver helmet.

When the Germans found they could not take Liège by what is called a frontal attack—that is by an attack from the front—they brought up their huge siege guns.

Now here I must stop to tell you about these guns. They were the first surprise of the War, for their construction was kept a profound secret by Germany, who with their help believed herself invincible! It is suspected by some people that these new siege guns were to be kept hidden till the enemy wished to strike terror into the defenders of the huge forts which guard Paris. If that be so, then the gallant defence put up by Liège forced the German generals to alter their plan, for as soon as they found they could not take the Belgian stronghold by assault, they dragged up seven huge guns—it takes thirty-five pairs of horses to drag one along—and began battering the Liège forts to pieces!

Soon the Fort of Loncin, where the brave General Leman had his headquarters, was entirely isolated. Each man, however, went on with his work calmly and courageously, and that even when the bombardment was so terrible that many were made—we must hope only temporarily—stone deaf.

One afternoon, just as General Leman and his staff were hastily drinking a cup of tea, a terrific explosion shook the whole fort, and a moment later its concrete walls collapsed in a cloud of flame and dust. Many were killed outright; those who survived had the anguish of seeing the enemy rush in.

In the midst of a scene of frightful horror and confusion the Germans sought with frantic eagerness for General Leman. Soon they found him, but at first they thought he was dead. He was, however, breathing, and so, still unconscious, he was placed on a stretcher and taken out of the ruins of the fort he had defended so gloriously.

There then occurred a fine little incident, and one to the credit of the enemy. At the end of a gallery of which the sides were still standing, were gathered together all that was left of the garrison. Black with powder, theirfaces streaked with blood, their clothes in ribbons, their hands clasping shattered rifles, the heroic little group, some twenty-five men, still stood to resist. Touched by such splendid courage, the Germans, instead of attacking, flung aside their weapons and ran to the help of the brave Belgian soldiers. Of the five hundred men who formed the garrison of Fort Loncin three hundred and fifty were killed and more than a hundred were seriously wounded.

Meanwhile General Leman had recovered consciousness. He had sworn never to be taken alive, but Fate had proved too strong for him! He was accordingly brought before General von Emmich, the Commander of the German forces. Sadly the Defender of Liège tendered his sword; but the German general handed it back to him, and, bowing courteously, congratulated General Leman very warmly on the splendid way in which he had conducted the defence.

This example of German magnanimity recalls a French incident of the kind which happened rather more than a hundred years ago. Lord Cochrane, commanding his little British brig, the Speedy, was captured by the huge Desaix. Admiral Linois, who lives in history as the bestof Napoleon’s naval commanders, refused, when Cochrane had to surrender, to take his sword. “I cannot,” he cried, “take the sword of a man so brave that he has been doing the impossible for twelve hours!” This was an allusion to the fact that though three huge French battleships had all attacked the Speedy together, her commander, by brilliant seamanship, had actually managed to elude capture for a whole day.

General Leman, on being made prisoner, sent a very touching letter to the King of the Belgians:

“Your Majesty will learn with grief that Fort Loncin was blown up yesterday at 5.20P.M., the greater part of the garrison being buried under the ruins.

“That I did not lose my life in that catastrophe is due to my escort, who drew me from a stronghold whilst I was being suffocated by gas from the exploded powder. I was conveyed to a trench, where I fell. A German captain gave me drink, and I was made prisoner and taken to Liège.

“In honour of our arms I have surrendered neither the fortress nor the forts.

“Deign pardon, Sire. In Germany, where I am proceeding, my thoughts will be, as they always have been,of Belgium and the King. I would willingly have given my life the better to serve them, but death was not granted to me.

“Lieutenant-GeneralLeman.”

It was a happy and a graceful act on the part of the French Government to bestow the Legion of Honour on the town of Liège, which, as was well said in the decree setting forth the honour, “was called upon to bear the first brunt of the German troops, and kept the invading army in check in a struggle which was as unequal as it was heroic.”

Every soldier worthy of the name not only respects, but heartily admires, a gallant, magnanimous foe. Had there been even a few German commanders like General von Emmich, there would not now rest, as there will do till the Day of Judgment, an indelible stain on Germany’s name.

It is awful to have to put on record that after the fall of Liège the enemy, maddened by the unexpected resistance, took a fearful vengeance on poor little Belgium.

As they marched through the lovely, peaceful villages, and charming, storied towns, which all other invaders hadspared even in the so-called dark ages, the Germans burnt, blew up, and destroyed far and wide, killing even women and children in their ruthlessness. Yet even so, these unarmed Belgians performed wonderful deeds of valour.

When the enemy approached Heristal, the Belgian Woolwich, where is the National Arms Factory, the town was defended against the German attack by the women, for all the men were already away fighting.

These wives and mothers swore that the enemy should never take the factory. They armed themselves with revolvers and other weapons, and actually repulsed several charges of the Uhlans. When their ammunition was exhausted, they barricaded themselves in various houses and poured boiling water on the Germans. Children and old men shared in the defence, and for two days the Belgian colours still floated over the factory buildings.

There is scarcely a village, and there is no town, in Belgium which has not some glorious page of history to its credit, and some precious survival of the Middle Ages in the shape of a noble old church or town hall. Only the glorious pages of history now remain. But thesehave been added to, for as a brave Frenchwoman once finely phrased it, “Le plomb ne tue pas l’idée,” which may be freely translated, “Bullets can only kill the body.”

The storied monuments alas! which belonged not only to generous little Belgium, but to the whole world, are gone. Battered, shattered, in many cases razed to the ground, by German lead, which, though powerless to kill the mind, has been able to destroy the sanctified beauty which the genius of artists and of saints had created with such happy labour and prayers.

It is a pathetic and even an awesome thing to have to say of any place—even of a tiny village—“it was, and is no longer.” That, unhappily, is what we now have to say of the venerable and beautiful town of Louvain—the Oxford of Belgium. Spared by innumerable armies, by the fighting men of a thousand years, it fell victim to one stupid barbarian, who, I suppose, still imagines himself to be an officer and a gentleman. His name is given as Manteuffel, and it is a curious irony of fate that the destroyer of one of the oldest homes of learning in Europe should bear a name honoured by all classical scholars.

This German commander, angered by a report, which seems to have been quite false, that some of the inhabitants of the town had fired when they saw their dread enemy approaching, ordered his soldiers to set fire, deliberately and systematically, to the houses and public buildings of a town which, to all lovers of the beautiful and to every scholar in the old and the new world, had become a shrine, a place of joyful pilgrimage.

Till this summer there actually remained at Louvain a fragment of what had once been Cæsar’s Castle, and this survival of Roman days was of special interest to English people, for Edward III and his queen lived in the Castle for a winter. That great Emperor, Charles V, and his sister also, were scholars at Louvain, their teacher there being a priest who afterwards became Pope Adrian VI.

Heroic deeds were performed by some of the citizens of Louvain. Take the case of Dr. Noyons, who happened at the time to be Principal of the Medical Faculty of the University. On the very day the German Army approached the town, he suddenly learned that a hundred wounded were to be brought in. Beds were hurriedly got ready, and Dr. Noyons and his wife, as well as a largestaff, were in attendance. This was at mid-day, and the wounded kept arriving all the afternoon.

At seven o’clock the firing of the town began! By eight o’clock the famous library was in flames!

Dr. Noyons’ own house, though it contained a number of wounded and had the Red Cross flag on the door, was now set on fire. But all night long the professor and his wife went on attending on the wounded, and when, the next morning, they were informed they must leave the town, in order that it might be razed to the ground by big guns, this noble-hearted couple at once decided to remain with those of the wounded (many of them Germans) who were too much injured to be moved.

Helped by a few trusted assistants, they carried their unhappy patients into the cellars of the hospital, and then they remained waiting for two days for a bombardment which fortunately never came. At the end of that time, this brave steadfast pair—a hero and heroine of a rare and splendid type—brought the wounded up again to the wards, and calmly continued to look after them.

Quite as awful as the fate of Louvain was that of the pretty town of Termonde. But there also splendid deeds of heroism were performed by quite simple folk.

Four times early in the War was unhappy Termonde bombarded, and twice it was deliberately set ablaze. But there were wounded there all through, and the Burgomaster and his two daughters never left the town. The two girls—the elder seventeen, and her sister a year younger—stayed at their posts as voluntary nurses, brave and fearless, thinking of nothing but their duty to the wounded.

The name of Termonde will now be for ever associated with the wicked and brutal conduct of the German Army. But before this last invasion of Belgium, Termonde was famed as having been the scene of all sorts of romantic incidents. Louis XIV, the stateliest of the great French kings, was very nearly drowned there, for the country round the town, like that of Holland, can be flooded at will. When the Sun King (as Louis XIV was nicknamed) was told that Marlborough was about to besiege Termonde, he observed: “He will have to bring an army of ducks to take it!” But Marlborough had thegood luck to be there at a time of terrible drought, and so the brave garrison had to surrender.

Malines, or Mechlin as we ought to call it, was also the scene of one of the fiercest fights, and suffered greatly from the enemy. The beautiful little town was splendidly defended by the brave Belgians, but after two days’ battle they had to retire. Mechlin is famous, not only for its exquisite lace, but also for its peal of bells, and this, grievous to say, was destroyed by a German shell. Robert Browning, in a poem which I expect many of you know by heart, “How they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix,” wrote:

“And from Mechlin church steeple we heard the half chime.”

But, tragic as was the fate of Mechlin, its most treasured relic was saved! This, amusing to relate, is a curious doll which bears the odd name of Op-Signoorke. This doll is said to have been modelled from a dwarf who was the official jester of a famous Antwerp club in the sixteenth century. In those days, every king and many a great noble had his dwarf, a kind of human toy who often played a considerable part in the life of his master.

The story goes that at a time when there was a great deal of friendly rivalry between the Flemish towns, Mechlin boasted of a wonderful dwarf jester who could out-talk and outwit any of his rivals. One of the Antwerp Guilds was much annoyed at this, and when the next meeting took place, it suddenly produced a new dwarf jester named Klaasken, who beat the Mechlin dwarf at his own game!

Soon afterwards Klaasken died, and when the next contest was held the good folk of Antwerp produced a wonderful model of him, beautifully carved and splendidly dressed. The Mechlin people, incensed at this insult to their live dwarf, carried him off one dark night, when the doll was left unguarded. Op-Signoorke, as he was then re-christened, remained at Mechlin, and ever since, on the occasion of the annual Kermesse, he is hung out for all to see from a window of the town hall. Now when it was known that the Germans were close to the town, a wise alderman put Op-Signoorke in a bomb-proof shelter, where he will repose till poor Belgium comes into her own again.

Shakespeare’s line inJulius Cæsar, “Let slip the dogs of war,” has a practical meaning in this war. Both theFrench and the German armies are accompanied to the front by war dogs;les chiens militairesanddie Kriegshunde, as they are respectively called, are trained to act as scouts, carry despatches, and they even help, as we shall see later on, to succour the wounded. In Belgium dogs do much of the work performed in other countries by horses, and during some of the more recent fights the smaller pieces of artillery were actually harnessed to dog teams.

And now we must leave brave Belgium for a while, though later in this book you will hear of many gallant deeds and romantic happenings, as well as much that is piteous and terrible, concerning that country which for hundreds of years has been called “The Cockpit of Europe.”

But there is much, even as I write, that goes to show that Belgium’s day of ordeal is drawing to a close, and to her we may say that as long as Britain, France, and Russia endure:

“There’s not a breathing of the common windThat will forget thee: thou hast great allies:Thy friends are exultations, agonies,And love, and man’s unconquerable mind.”

“There’s not a breathing of the common wind

That will forget thee: thou hast great allies:

Thy friends are exultations, agonies,

And love, and man’s unconquerable mind.”

Back to Index Next