The contrast which I have endeavoured to indicate, in the first chapter, between the attitude of the German administration before the fall of Antwerp and its behaviour afterwards is nowhere so well marked as in the measures taken for the purpose of repressing all Belgian manifestations of patriotism.

During the two first months of occupation, the Germans made at least a show of respecting the loyal feelings of the population. In his first proclamation, dated September 2nd, in which he announced his appointment as General Governor of Belgium, Baron von der Goltz declared that “he asked no one to renounce his patriotic feelings.” And when, a few days later, the Governor of Brussels, Baron von Luttwitz, issued a poster “advising” the citizens to take their flags from their windows, he did this in conciliatory words, giving the pretext that these manifestations might provoke reprisals from the German troops passing through the town: “The Military Governor does not intend in the least to hurt, by such a measure, the feelings and self-respect of the inhabitants. His only aim is to protect them against all harm.” (September 16th.) Every Belgian was still wearing the national colours, pictures of the King and Queen were sold in the streets, and the Brabançonne was hummed, whistled, and sung all over the country. The people had lost every right but one: they could still show the enemy, in spite of the declarations of the German Press, that they were not yet ready to accept his rule.

This apparent tolerance is easy to explain. After the massacres of August, the German authorities were anxious not to exasperate public opinion, and not to spoil by uselessly vexatious measures the effect which had been produced. During the Marne and the three sorties of the Belgian army, they had only a very small number of men at their disposal to garrison the largest towns. The slightest progress of the Belgian army might have endangered their line of communications. We know now that the withdrawal of the seat of the government from Brussels to Liege was at one moment seriously contemplated, and that the same troops were made to pass again and again through the streets of the capital in order to give the illusion that the garrison was stronger than it really was (Frankfurter Zeitung, August 22nd, 1916). Besides, Germany had not yet given up all hopes of coming to terms with King Albert, since a third attempt was to be made at Antwerp to separate the Belgian Government from the Allies. In these circumstances it seemed wiser to let the Belgian folk indulge in their harmless manifestations of loyalty, so long as they did not cause any disturbance and did not complicate the task of the military.

Let us look now at the next phase. As soon as the Belgian army has achieved its junction with the Allies on the Yser and all communications are cut between the Government and the people, the Germans cease to consider Belgium as an occupied territory, and seize upon every pretext to treat her as a conquered country, which will, sooner or later, become part of the Empire. They no longer take the trouble to explain or justify their oppressive measures, or to reconcile them with their former promises. They simply ignore them. First in Namur (November the 15th, 1914), then in Brussels (June the 30th, 1915), it becomes a crime to wear the tricolour cockade. The Te Deum, which is celebrated every year, on November 15th, in honour of King Albert’s Saint’s day, is forbidden. From the month of March, 1915, it is practically a forbidden thing to sing the Brabançonne, even in the schools. All patriotic manifestations, on the occasion of the King’s Birthday (April 8th) and of the anniversary of Belgian Independence day (July 21st) are severely prosecuted.

In some of the orders issued there is still a weak attempt at “respecting,” in a German way, “the people’s patriotic feelings.” The Governor of Namur, for instance, discriminates with the acutest subtlety between wearing the national colours in private and in public, and the Brabançonne can for a time be sung, so long as it is not rendered “in a provoking manner.” In fact, the Belgians are free to manifest their patriotism so long as they are neither seen nor heard. They are generously allowed to line their cupboards with tricolour paper and to hum their national tunes in the depth of their cellars. But, in most of the orders made under Governor von Bissing’s rule (his reign began on December 3rd, 1914), this last pretence of consideration and respect disappears entirely. “I warn the public,” declares the Governor of Brussels on July the 18th, 1914, “that any demonstration whatsoever is forbidden on July 21st next.”

More than that, the German Administration frequently goes out of its way to hurt the people’s feelings. The fact of helping a patriot to join the Army is not merely punished as a crime against the Germans, it is delicately called “a crime of treason,” and when people are condemned because they are suspected of belonging to the Belgian intelligence service, the public posters announcing their condemnation speak of them as supplying information “to the enemy.”

The sham tolerance of the first days has given way to a restless repression, and even, during the last year, to deliberate persecution. Schools may be inspected at any time by the authorities and every “anti-German manifestation” (that is to say, any pro-Belgian teaching) is severely punished. Shops are raided so that every patriotic picture post-card (especially the portraits of the Royal Family) may be seized, and even the intimacy of the private home is not respected. To begin with, the Belgians have been allowed to show their loyalty with discretion; next, every patriotic manifestation is excluded from public life; and last, the Germans, through their spies, penetrate the homes of every citizen, and endeavour to extirpate by a reign of terror these same feelings which they so emphatically promised to respect.

People who are leading a quiet life and who enjoy the blessings of an autonomous Government will perhaps not appreciate the importance which the Belgians attach, at the present moment, to these patriotic manifestations. They may imagine that, so long as national life is assured and citizens are otherwise left alone by their conquerors, public affirmation of loyalty to King and country is of secondary importance.

God knows that the economic situation of occupied Belgium is bad enough, and the endless and tragic lists of condemnations and déportations are there to prove that her people are living under the most barbarous regime of modern times. But, even if this was not the case, anybody with the slightest knowledge of their national character would understand the extraordinary value which the Belgians attached to their last privilege and the deep indignation roused by this German betrayal.

Von Bissing shrugs his shoulders and calls them “big children.” So they are. And his son, with a scornful smile, declares in the Suddeutsche Monatschrift (April 15th, 1915) that it is in “the people’s blood to demonstrate and to wear cockades.” So it is. The love of processions and public pageants of all kinds is deeply rooted in Belgian traditions. But what does it prove? Simply that the people have preserved enough freshness and joy of life to care for these things, enough courage and independence to feel most need of them when they are most afflicted. This is how they think of it: “Our bands used to pass through the streets, shaking our window-panes with the crashing of their trombones, our flags used to wave in the breeze in the happy days of peace. Should we now remain, silent and withdrawn, in the selfish privacy of our houses, now that the country needs us most, now that we want, more than ever, to feel that we are one people and that we will remain independent and united whatever happens in the future?” Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Bissing sneers at the Belgians because on any and every pretext they display the American colours. If they do, it is because they are not allowed to display their own, and because they feel somehow that the best way to show that they have still a flag is to adopt the colours of the great country which has so generously come to their help. It may well be, as the Baron informs us, that most of the “small and big children” who wear the Stars and Stripes do not know a word of English. What does it mean again? Simply that heart may call to heart and that it is not necessary to talk in his own language to understand a brother’s mind. It is true that only children children small and big know how to do it.

If the Germans had had the least touch of generous feeling for the unfortunate country upon which they thrust war in spite of the most solemn treaties, they would not have obliged the Belgian citizens to lower the flags which they had put up during the defence of Liege, they would not have torn their tricolour cockades from their buttonholes, they would not have silenced their national songs, they would not have added these deep humiliations to the bitter cup of defeat. One wonders even why they did it if it was not for the mere pleasure which the bully is supposed to feel when he makes his strength felt by his victim. They might have gone on gaily plundering the country, shooting patriots, deporting young men, doing whatever seemed useful in their eyes. But the petty tyranny of these measures passes understanding. Governor von Bissing is certainly too clever to believe that the satisfaction of making a few cowards uneasy by such regulations can at all outweigh the danger inherent in the resentment and the deep hatred which the bullying has aroused against Germany. You may take the children’s bread, you may take their freedom, but you might at least leave them a few toys to play with, and you would be wise to do so.

Such narrow-minded tyranny always defeats its own objects. Burgomaster Max’s proud answer to General von Luttwitz’s “advice” to remove the flags became the password of the patriots. Every Bruxellois henceforth “waited for the hour of reparation.” A great number of women went to prison rather than remove the emblems of Belgium which they wore. Stories passed from lip to lip. Their accuracy I would not guarantee, but they belong to the epic of the war and are true to the spirit of the people. A young lady, who was jeered at by a German officer because she was wearing King Albert’s portrait, is said to have answered his “Lackland” with, “I would rather have a King who has lost his country than an Emperor who has lost his honour.” Another lady, sitting in a tram-car opposite a German officer, was ordered by him to remove her tricolour rosette. She refused to do so, and, as he threatened her, defied him to do it himself. The Boche seized the rosette and pulled .. and pulled .. and pulled. The lady had concealed twenty yards of ribbon in her corsage.

When the tricolour was forbidden altogether, it was replaced by the ivyleaf, ivy being the emblem of faithfulness; later, the ivyleaf was followed by a green ribbon, green being the colour of hope. The Brabançonne being excluded from the street and from the school took refuge in the Churches, where it is played and often sung by the congregation at the end of the service. There are many ways of getting round the law. The Belgians were forbidden to celebrate in any ordinary way the anniversary of their independence. Thanks to a sort of tacit arrangement they succeeded in marking the occasion in spite of all regulations. On July 21st, 1915, the Bruxellois kept the shutters of their houses and shops closed and went out in the streets dressed in their best clothes, most of them in mourning. The next year, as the closing of shops was this time foreseen by the administration, they remained open. But a great number of tradespeople managed ingeniously to display the national colours in their windows by the juxtaposition, for instance, of yellow lemons, red tomatoes and black grapes. Others emptied their windows altogether.

These jokes may seem childish, at first sight, but when we think that those who dared perform them paid for it with several months’ imprisonment or several thousand marks, and paid cheerily, we understand that there is more in them than a schoolboy’s pranks. It seems as if the Belgian spirit would break if it ceased to be able to react. One of the shop-managers who was most heavily fined on the occasion of our last “Independence Day” declared that he had not lost his money: “It is rather expensive, but it is worth it.”

If patriotism has become a religion in Belgium, this religion has found a priest whose authority is recognised by the last unbeliever. If every church has become the “Temple de la Patrie,” if the Brabançonne resounds under the Gothic arches of every nave, Cardinal Mercier has become the good shepherd who has taken charge of the flock during the King’s absence. The great Brotherhood, for which so many Christian souls are yearning, in which there are no more classes, parties, and sects, seems well nigh achieved beyond the electrified barbed wire of the Belgian frontier. Are not all Belgians threatened with the same danger, are they not close-knit by the same hope, the same love, the same hatred?

When the bells rang from the towers of Brussels Cathedral on July 21st last, when, in his red robes, Cardinal Mercier blessed the people assembled to celebrate the day of Belgium’s Independence, it seemed that the soul of the martyred nation hovered in the Church. After the national anthem, people lifted their eyes towards the great crucifix in the choir, and could no longer distinguish, through their tears, the image of the Crucified from that of their bleeding country.