Part 18

Davis got back yesterday from his trip to the front, and we learned that he had been through a perfectly good experience that will look well when he comes to writing it up, but one that gave him little satisfaction while it was in progress. He started off to follow the German army in the hope of locating the English. After leaving Hal, some bright young German officer decided that he was a suspicious-looking character, and ought to be shot as an English spy. As a preliminary, they arrested him and locked him up. Then the war was called off while the jury sat on his case. One of the officers thought it would be a superfluous effort to go through the form of trying him, but that they should shoot him without further to do. They began considering his case at eleven in the morning, and kept it up until midnight. He was given pretty clearly to understand that his chances were slim, and that the usual fate of spies awaited him. He argued at length, and apparently his arguments had some effect, for at three o'clock in the morning he was routed out and told to hit the road toward Brussels. He was ordered to keep religiously to the main road all the way back, on pain of being shot on sight, and to report at headquarters here immediately on his arrival. By this time he was perfectly willing to do exactly what was demanded by those in authority, and made a bee-line back here on foot. He turned up at the Legation yesterday morning, footsore and weary, and looking like a tramp, and told his story to an admiring audience. I was still away on my little jaunt, and did not get it at first hand. The Minister took him down to call on the General, and got them to understand that Richard Harding Davis was not an English spy, but, on the contrary, probably the greatest writer that ever lived, not excepting Shakespeare or Milton. The General said he had read some of his short stories, and that he would not have him shot. Just the same, he was not keen about having him follow the operations. He is now ordered to remain in this immediate neighbourhood until further orders. To-day he had several interviews with the General in an attempt to get permission to leave the country, but had no luck. The last we saw of Davis, he came in late this afternoon to tell us that he did not know what to do next. He said that he had been through six wars, but that he had never been so scared as he was at that time. If he is allowed to get out of Belgium, I think that he will not darken the door of General von Luettwitz for some time to come.

I was surprised to learn that Hans von Herwarth, who used to be military attache in Washington, and whom I knew very well, is here as Adjutant to our new Governor. I have not yet had time to get over to see him, but shall try to do so to-morrow. I am glad to have somebody like that here to do business with. He is a real white man, and I anticipate a much better time with him than with any other officer they could send here in that capacity.

Baron Capelle came in late this afternoon to tell me that the Germans were bringing in a lot of priests on carts filled with cows and pigs, and were planning to hold them as hostages. One of them had called out and asked him to notify us that Monseigneur de Becker, Rector of the American College at Louvain, was among these prisoners. He is the priest I went to see when I was in Louvain ten days ago. I had told him he was perfectly safe, and scoffed at his fears.

The Minister was out when this news came, but I sallied forth and tried to locate the Monseigneur. He was not to be found anywhere. When I got back to the Legation, both the Minister and Villalobar were here and I told them all about what had happened. The people of the town were getting excited over the treatment that was being meted out to their priests, and it was in a fair way to result in serious trouble. Both Ministers made for the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, where the German Government is established, and before they left, had secured orders for the release of all the hostages. A lot of these terrible things are done by subordinate officers, and the people at the top seem only too anxious to learn of such affairs and do what they can to remedy them. The day has been dreadful with stories of suffering and murder and pillage.

Not only are we cut off from communication with the outside world, but a lot of the ordinary conveniences of life have already disappeared. We have no newspapers, no trams, no taxis, no telephones. Milk is no longer to be had, and within a day or two we shall have no butter or eggs. Then it will begin to look like a real siege. In a day or so I am to have a list of Jarotzky's demands for supplies, so that I can cheer myself with thoughts of what our life is to be like.

There is bad news from Louvain. The reports we have received agree that there was some sort of trouble in the square before the Hotel de Ville a day or two ago. Beyond that, no two reports are alike. The Germans say that the son of the Burgomaster shot down some staff officers who were talking together at dusk before the Hotel de Ville. The only flaw in that story is that the Burgomaster has no son. Some Belgians say that two bodies of Germans who were drunk met in the dusk; that one body mistook the other for French, and opened fire. Other reliable people tell with convincing detail that the trouble was planned and started by the Germans in cold blood. However that may be, the affair ended in the town being set on fire, and civilians shot down in the streets as they tried to escape. According to the Germans themselves, the town is being wiped out of existence. The Cathedral, the Library, the University, and other public buildings have either been destroyed or have suffered severely. People have been shot by hundreds, and those not killed are being driven from the town. They are coming to Brussels by thousands, and the end is not yet. This evening the wife of the Minister of Fine Arts came in with the news that her mother, a woman of eighty-four, had been driven from her home at the point of the bayonet and forced to walk with a stream of refugees all the way to Tervueren, a distance of about twelve miles, before she could be put on a tram to her daughter's house. Two old priests have staggered into the ---- Legation more dead than alive after having been compelled to walk ahead of the German troops for miles as a sort of protecting screen. One of them is ill, and it is said that he may die as a result of what he has gone through.

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August 28th.--After lunch Blount and I decided to go out to Louvain to learn for ourselves just how much truth there is in the stories we have heard, and see whether the American College is safe. We were going alone, but Pousette and Bulle, the Swedish and Mexican Charges d'Affaires, were anxious to join us, so the four of us got away together and made good time as far as the first outpost this side of Louvain.

Here there was a small camp by a hospital, and the soldiers came out to examine our papers and warn us to go no farther, as there was fighting in the town. The road was black with frightened civilians carrying away small bundles from the ruins of their homes. Ahead was a great column of dull gray smoke which completely hid the city. We could hear the muffled sound of firing ahead. Down the little street which led to the town, we could see dozens of white flags which had been hung out of the windows in a childish hope of averting trouble.

We talked with the soldiers for some time in an effort to get some idea of what had really happened in the town. They seemed convinced that civilians had precipitated the whole business by firing upon the staff of a general who was parleying with the Burgomaster in the square before the Hotel de Ville. They saw nothing themselves, and believe what they are told. Different members of the detachment had different stories to tell, including one that civilians had a machine gun installed on top of the Cathedral, and fired into the German troops, inflicting much damage. One of the men told us that his company had lost twenty-five men in the initial flurry. They were a depressed and nervous-looking crew, bitter against the civil population and cursing their ways with great earnestness. They were at some pains to impress upon us that all Belgians were Schwein, and that the people of Louvain were the lowest known form of the animal.

After talking the situation over with the officer in command, we decided to try getting around the town to the station by way of the ring of outer boulevards. We got through in good shape, being stopped a few times by soldiers and by little groups of frightened civilians who were cowering in the shelter of doorways, listening to the noise of fighting in the town, the steady crackle of machine guns, and the occasional explosions.

They were pathetic in their confidence that the United States was coming to save them. In some way word has traveled all over Belgium that we have entered the war on the side of Belgium, and they all seem to believe it. Nearly every group we talked to asked hopefully when our troops were coming, and when we answered that we were not involved, they asked wistfully if we didn't think we should be forced to come in later. A little boy of about eight, in a group that stopped us, asked me whether we were English, and when I told him what we were, he began jumping up and down, clapping his hands, and shouting:

Les Americains sont arrives! Les Americains sont arrives!

His father told him to be quiet, but he was perfectly happy and clung to the side of the car as long as we stayed, his eyes shining with joy, convinced that things were going to be all right somehow.

About half way around the ring of boulevards we came to burning houses. The outer side of the boulevard was a hundred feet or so from the houses, so the motor was safe, but it was pretty hot and the cinders were so thick that we had to put on our goggles. A lot of the houses were still burning, but most of them were nothing but blackened walls with smouldering timbers inside. Many of the front doors had been battered open in order to start the fires or to rout out the people who were in hiding.

We came to a German ammunition wagon, half upset against a tree, where it had been hurled when the horses had turned to run away. The tongue was broken and wrenched out. Near by were the two horses, dead and swollen until their legs stood out straight. Then we began to see more ghastly sights--poor civilians lying where they had been shot down as they ran--men and women--one old patriarch lying on his back in the sun, his great white beard nearly hiding his swollen face. All sorts of wreckage scattered over the street, hats and wooden shoes, German helmets, swords and saddles, bottles and all sorts of bundles which had been dropped and abandoned when the trouble began. For three-quarters of a mile the boulevard looked as though it had been swept by a cyclone. The Porte de Tirlemont had evidently been the scene of particularly bloody business. The telegraph and trolley wires were down; dead men and horses all over the square; the houses still burning. The broad road we had traveled when we went to Tirlemont was covered with wreckage and dead bodies.

Some bedraggled German soldiers came out from under the gate and examined our passes. They were nervous and unhappy and shook their heads gloomily over the horrors through which they were passing. They said they had had hardly a minute's sleep for the past three nights. Their eyes were bloodshot and they were almost too tired to talk. Some of them were drunk--in the sodden stage, when the effect begins to wear off. They told us we could proceed in safety as far as the station, where we would find the headquarters of the commanding officer. Here we could leave the motor and learn how far we could safely go. This crowd varied the wording a little by saying that the Belgians were all dogs and that these particular dogs were being driven out, as they should be, that all that part of town was being cleared of people, ordered to leave their homes and go to Brussels or some other town, so that the destruction of Louvain could proceed systematically. We thought at the time that they were exaggerating what was being done, but were enlightened before we had gone much farther.

We continued down the boulevard for a quarter of a mile or so till we came to the station. Sentries came out and looked through our passes again. We parked the motor with a number of German military cars in the square and set off on foot down the Rue de la Station, which we had admired so much when we had driven down its length, just ten days before.

The houses on both sides were either partially destroyed or smouldering. Soldiers were systematically removing what was to be found in the way of valuables, food, and wine, and then setting fire to the furniture and hangings. It was all most businesslike. The houses are substantial stone buildings, and fire will not spread from one to another. Therefore the procedure was to batter down the door of each house, clean out what was to be saved, then pile furniture and hangings in the middle of the room, set them afire, and move on to the next house.

It was pretty hot, but we made our way down the street, showing our passes every hundred feet or so to soldiers installed in comfortable armchairs, which they had dragged into the gutter from looted houses, till we came to a little crossing about half way to the Hotel de Ville. Here we were stopped by a small detachment of soldiers, who told us that we could go no farther; that they were clearing civilians out of some houses a little farther down the street, and that there was likely to be firing at any time.

The officer in command spoke to us civilly and told us to stick close to him so that we could know just what we ought to do at any time. He was in charge of the destruction of this part of the town and had things moving along smartly. His men were firing some houses near by and he stood outside smoking a rank cigar and looking on gloomily.

We exchanged remarks with him in German for a few minutes, I limping along behind the more fluent Pousette and Bulle. Then I said something in an aside to Blount, and the officer broke into the conversation in perfectly good English. He turned out to be a volunteer officer from Hamburg, who had spent some thirty years in England and was completely at home in the language.

We then accomplished the formal introductions which are so necessary to Germans even at a time like this, and when we came to Bulle the officer burst into a rapid fire of questions, which ended in his proclaiming in rapture:

"Why, I knew your father in Hamburg and went to school with your Uncle So-and-so!"

Reminiscence went on as though we were about a dining table at home; minute inquiry was made into the welfare and activities of the Bulle family from the cradle to the grave. On the strength of the respectability of Bulle's relatives we were then taken under the officer's wing and piloted by him through the rest of our visit.

From where we stood we could see down the street through the smoke, as far as the Hotel de Ville. It was still standing, but the Cathedral across the street was badly damaged and smoke was rising in clouds from its roof. The business houses beyond were not to be seen; the smoke was too dense to tell how many of them were gone.

Machine guns were at work near by, and occasionally there was a loud explosion when the destructive work was helped with dynamite.

A number of the men about us were drunk and evidently had been in that state for some time. Our officer complained that they had had very little to eat for several days, but added glumly that there was plenty to drink.