Very few motor-cars are seen in the streets, and during my stay of more than a week I did not see a single car driven by a civilian.The petrol question seems to have become extremely serious. All the motor garages are closed, and it is impossible to obtain the spirit at any price, not only in large quantities, but even in small bottles from a chemist's shop.
This accounts for the boom in acetylene lamps and carbide. New large shops selling these goods have opened all over the country. In most villages gas and electric light have been cut off, and this is the only means of obtaining any light.
Here, again, Brussels has very special treatment. The town at night is as full of light as usual—probably because the Germans know perfectly well that if the Allies should attempt an air attack they would almost certainly damage the civilian population more than the occupiers. Very often, in the daytime, a Zeppelin will appear over the town; people are so used to the sight that they take little or no notice.
To sum up: the Brussels population has become accustomed very quickly to the newsituation. Nobody seems to mind the incessant rumble of the guns in the distance, nor the food scarcity and high prices, nor the abnormal life of the town. Nor the lack of amusements.
I have said some theatres are open; they are, but only for the Germans. The Belgian people refuse to go to them for two good reasons. They do not want to mix with the Germans, and they do not think it right to enjoy themselves when their country is reduced to such pitiful conditions and their King and the remnants of his army are fighting on the last bit of Belgian soil.
For the Germans there are even music-hall shows and dances, and, with that beautiful sense of tradition which, according to Nietzsche, is one of the secrets of German clumsiness, even the decrepit institution of Tango Teas is still kept alive. And there the Hun stuffs himself with more champagne and costly food.
At ten miles' distance from Brussels theinhabitants of Forest have been rationed at half a pound of brown bread per head.
* * *
It is very difficult to obtain from the German Kommandantur in Belgium permission to travel anywhere past the line of Ghent, Brussels, and Charleroi. The permits are not readily granted even to Germans and Belgians, and a foreigner, whatever his nationality, finds it almost impossible to secure one. The parties of American, Italian, and German journalists taken to visit the trenches and the supposed firing line were really shown only a few places previously arranged. In no case were they allowed to see the things they really wanted to see, nor were they permitted to talk to the population or to the soldiers.
If I wished to get near the front I realised that I must find a very convincing pretext. I happened to have some friends, proprietors of large motor works in Tournai, so I managed to obtain a pass for this town, alleging some business transactions as my excuse.
From Brussels the train only took me as far as Enghien, from which little town I had to proceed by road in an impossible vehicle pulled by an old horse, so old and worn out that it had escaped German requisition. It must have been a very old horse to escape that.
Curiously enough, the part of Belgium I crossed while approaching the German front seemed to have suffered very little. No ruins and no burned houses. Indeed, but for the sentries posted on the road every quarter of a mile, one could have thought the country was at peace.
But a few miles before Tournai was reached the country began to assume a warlike appearance.
Numerous trenches, which evidently had never been used, and which were filled with ice-covered water, lay ready for an eventual retreat. From this point up to the front there were long lines of trenches at frequent intervals. Before reaching Tournai I passed a military aerodrome, which had beenarranged in a large treeless piece of ground near Basècles. Two large Zeppelin shelters and some temporary hangars, capable of holding about ten aeroplanes, had been erected.
One of the Zeppelins was just coming back from the direction of Brussels when we passed; two aeroplanes had been taken out in the open air, and a number of soldiers were busy round them.
Though Tournai is not very near the front the town is completely occupied by German troops, and is treated as a town in the battle zone. This is because the town occupies a very important position on the River Schelde and because Lille, about twenty kilometres westward is too close to the firing line to permit of its being used as a base.
All the bridges on the river are mined, most of the houses have been converted into temporary hospitals for slightly wounded soldiers, and the town is filled with officers and men just back from the trenches.
Never before had I seen German soldiersnewly returned from the field of battle. Nothing remained of the well-dressed, well-fed, and stiff troops generally seen in Germany. Their uniforms were torn and dirty; their faces unshaven, thin, and often unhealthy. They did not sing, they were not noisy. I saw them in cafés and restaurants writing long letters home, with a large glass of beer in front of them.
Often in the same establishment were groups of bright young soldiers in comparatively fresh uniforms, soldiers who were cheering and singing because next day they were going to the front. They were men of the '95 and '96 classes who had just come from Germany. The veterans were looking at them, and I heard one say to another, "They will cool down soon; they don't know yet what the trenches are like."
Tournai has seen going through its streets most of the German wounded on their way back to the Fatherland and most of the prisoners travelling to the concentration camps in Germany. Nobody could tell me,even approximately, the number of wounded that had gone through the town, but everybody agreed the number was very large, though the number of sick is still larger. Typhoid fever claims a large number of victims, both amongst the troops and the civilian population.
Special notices warning everyone to drink no water unless it had been boiled were to be seen everywhere. Lately numerous cases of lockjaw (tetanus) have also made their appearance. It is said that soldiers get the dreadful illness while working with barbed wire.
The station of Tournai, as well as two large hotels near it, have been converted into depôts for the wounded who are to be sent to Germany. Apparently the German Government does not like wounded or sick soldiers to come into touch with civilians or with soldiers going to the front. It is to avoid such contact that they are concentrated in Tournai, and from there sentviâMons, Liége, Aix-la-Chapelle, straight toGermany. No civilians are allowed into the station at Tournai, and the wounded always travel by special train.
For the prisoners it is different. They are marched through the town, preceded and followed by German troops. The population offers them cigars, sweets, and tobacco, to the great rage of the German soldiers, who can never manage to make any friends. Very often the same group of soldiers is made to march through the town many times to impress the population with the large number of prisoners.
A lady who has been in Tournai since the beginning of the war told me that she once noticed amongst a group of British soldiers a very tall, thin, and red-haired Highlander, and she remarked to a lady friend with her, "Isn't that man the living caricature of the Englishman as we always see him on the stage?"
But two or three days later she saw a fellow exactly like the first amongst another group of prisoners; she came to theconclusion that the giraffe-like figures and ginger hair were rather common in the British Army.
The next day brought another group of British prisoners and another apparition of a very tall, red-haired "Tommy." She looked at him interrogatively, at which he bowed and shouted out in a jolly voice: "Here I am again, madam." The lady bid him good-bye, but the Tommy laughed, and answered, "No,au revoir. I shall call again soon, I am sure."
I wanted to get as near the firing line as possible, and I asked permission to go to Lille. This was denied me, and as, considering the enormous number of sentries on the roads, it would have been foolish to try and go there without it, I decided to go instead to Courtrai, a little town north of Tournai, which is only about twelve kilometres (about eight miles) from the firing line.
Tournai, which is not at all damaged in the centre of the town, has a number ofhouses destroyed in its northern part. The wonderful cathedral, a mixture of twenty different styles, but, in spite of this, quite harmonious and beautiful, has received a shell which luckily has not done much damage.
Four large motor-vans passed in front of me on the road to Courtrai, and my horse, which in former years had probably been a good charger, reared and neighed loudly. They were Red Cross vans loaded with wounded. Four or five times a day they go to Tournai carrying wounded, and come back carrying sanitary material to the northern section of the German front.
I crossed the Schelde by a temporary bridge made with curious concrete flat boats. The bridge was guarded by numerous soldiers, and with them was an Austrian officer, the only one I saw during the whole of my journey in Belgium.
I had to get off the saddle and show my papers. While waiting for the officer to look at them, my attention was attracted to anextraordinary-looking boat drawn up near the river side. The boat was just like one of the ordinary flat, large river boats which in Belgium carry stones and coal on canals and rivers, but for an exceptionally clean, smart appearance lent to it by a verandah covered with glass, under which were numerous palm trees. The whole boat was painted white, and on the top of it waved the Red Cross flag. On deck were two white-clad nurses, and one or two wounded with bandaged heads sat smoking and reading in basket-chairs on the verandah.
I was told that the boat is one of the Berlin Red Cross League floating hospitals, and that the nurses are all ladies in society. These hospital boats are specially intended for wounded or sick officers who are likely to recover soon if properly treated.
* * *
Are there any inhabitants left in Courtrai? I did not see any during my visit there. The hotels and the public buildings were takenup by Germans; numerous platforms for guns were being constructed in the western part of the town. A number of temporary fortification works had already been prepared here. The line of the Lys seems to have been carefully fortified down to Courtrai, and one almost gets the impression that the Germans are seriously thinking of the possibility of a retreat on this river, while a second and still better fortified line has been prepared twenty kilometres (about thirteen miles) behind on the Schelde.
At the base of the old fortifications of the town, where the famous Bataille des Eperons d'Or was fought, the invaders have arranged a sort of artillery depôt. The special carriages carry the fire-pieces from Essen to this spot, where they are put together, and then sent to their destination.
There are the enormous siege guns, as massive as elephants, and as complicated as a cathedral organ; the quick-firing guns, light and agile; the short and squat mortars; and on one side a sort of cemetery of oldartillery pieces; guns without carriages, smashed wheels, distorted and broken remains of old arms blackened and made unrecognisable by the explosions of hostile projectiles.
The number of soldiers here seemed enormous. Day after day trains loaded with new troops kept coming. These men are only in part sent to the front, the other part leaving for an unknown destination. I had the impression that something was being prepared, probably a desperate attack on the north-west in the direction of Ypres and Dixmude.
Courtrai is quite close to the trenches; often regiments which have been for a week or ten days in the firing line come back, and are replaced by fresh troops.
Every now and again a shell bursts in the town and causes some damage. It is almost impossible to get anything to eat anywhere, and the population is strictly rationed. To make sure that no light will give away the position of the town at night, gas andelectric light have been cut off. At nine o'clock everybody must be indoors.
I don't know if civilians have all left the town by order of the Governor, but it is certain that it seems to be only inhabited by soldiers. Some houses with doors wide open are completely abandoned, whilst others, the best ones, are inhabited by officers. A number have been burned.
In no hotels was there a room to be had, and I spent the night on a billiard-table covered with a mattress. Every now and again the guns awakened me with their thunder-like rumble, which at night sounded nearer and stranger. I could see the clouds in the distance reddened by the flames of the explosions.
In the morning I went down to the cemetery of the town, which, being at the extreme west, gave me opportunity to glance towards the forbidden ground, the real firing line. In the distance, with the help of a good pair of field-glasses, lent me by an officer, I could see something moving slowly with smokeabove it. Behind the leafless trees of the road more smoke announced the German artillery position.
I told what I had seen to an officer, who happened to be a very nice fellow, and I asked him: "Is a modern battlefield always so slow?"
"Yes, almost always."
"And this goes on for weeks?" I said.
"For months, sir!"
"And don't you think it likely that you or the others will try a decided move one of these days?"
"We hope so," answered the officer; "we have not begun to fight yet."
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Transcriber's Note:Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.
Transcriber's Note:Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.