Chapter II: The First Days in Brussels

Restarting almost immediately, I crossed to Ostend. On the way there were the usual reassuring but unrecordable sights of the sentinel cruisers and busy submarines that made these frequent passages seem, after later weeks in the war countries, like an escape into a comfortable atmosphere of home.

At Ostend a party of efficient St. John Ambulance nurses with whom I had travelled were received with delightful enthusiasm, and free lemonade, by the Belgian soldiers.

Brussels proved a contrast after Paris. The panic days, which took a milder form here in spite of, or because of, the greater proximity of danger, had passed. The townsfolk were absolutely calm, the shops open, the life, except for the absence of means of traffic, undisturbed.

Only at intervals, as the chance of the German occupation increased, and the news diminished, there would come over the city for a few hours, one of those electric restless waves which we got to know as signs of approaching danger. They arose from no definite news. The crowds repeated no rumours. It was merely an uneasy feeling in the air. Something had happened far off, and like the unseen fall of a heavy stone in water the ripple reached and spread over the city, that yet had no definite information to disturb it.

Brussels, Monday.

In addition to the well-deserved enthusiasm with which Belgian heroism in arms has been greeted throughout civilised Europe, something must be said of the success with which the extraordinary demands have been met by the departments of the civil administration of Belgium.

During the last few days I have been in contact with a variety of administrative offices in the capitals of three of the belligerent Powers. In one country it seems as yet unrecognised that exceptional conditions demand exceptional organisation. In another there is frank confusion, due to the withdrawal of the majority of the efficient administrative staff to the war and the concentration of the remainder solely on military requirements. Only in Brussels has it been recognised in time that the civil life of a country, properly controlled, is as important to success as any section of the work of mobilisation, and that it is not sufficient to proclaim a state of war and leave everything to an already over-worked military organisation.

Some genius (we know now it was Burgomaster Max) must have been behind the details of city administration here, for in their way they have been as successful in maintaining public confidence as the personality of the mountaineer King has been in inspiring magnificent enthusiasm in his army. The streets are kept orderly, retail trade is almost normal, railway traffic has been rarely interfered with by the immense task of mobilisation; the complications of travellers and passports are simplified and dealt with efficiently and considerately; the Press control is effective but courteous; the hospitals are admirably organised; and the crowds are kept from the stations, on the arrival of wounded or prisoners.

All civil organisations are made use of, and even the Boy Scouts are doing excellent work for all branches, without the error--increasing across the border--of considering themselves semi-combatants. The result is that though the crisis, after the first few days, is being met in all the capitals with gravity and quiet resolution, Brussels--the most immediately threatened--remains a model of civic life under strict but considerate administration.

The moral, if any, is that even in actual war nations are only the weaker for having to send the whole of their manhood to the front. To convert the whole community, with its varied forces of activity, into a single military machine, is to make the machine itself less effective.

Brussels, Tuesday.

I have been given to-day every facility to inspect the excellent organisation for the care of the wounded. A noticeable feature at the central office is the extent to which amateur help is made use of in organising, and the efficiency and open mind with which unexpected contingencies are met and suggestions considered.

(Later a growing amount of the unqualified "Red Cross" help was found to be open to the same objections that were made to it as the result of our own experience in the Boer War.)

If experience in Paris and Brussels can be turned to account, the British authorities should pay attention to the organisation of private motor-cars lent to the force, to make them of real service. A large proportion are apt to race about without purpose or serviceable return--the usual difficulty with a crowd of enthusiastic would-be helpers.

The prisoners at Bruges confirm the impression that the commissariat arrangements of the advance guard of the invading German columns was very defective, owing to the unexpected resistance. The nature of the wounds bears out the reports of inexpert German shooting. A great number of the Belgian soldiers brought back from the front are wounded below the knee, and a smaller proportion in the scalp.

The Bruges authorities are most considerate in allowing books and games to be sent to the prisoners of war, and letters to be sent and received. (We were permitted to send down dozens of packs of cards etc., as a distraction for the prisoners.)

The population remains completely calm, even at a time when the next few days may decide their fate. The passage of a German aeroplane yesterday aroused only momentary curiosity. (Every day at about five o'clock the aeroplanes circled over the town. We got to look for them. Almost every night also a bright planet, the "Brussels star" was watched by interested crowds, who took it for a "Zeppelin.")

I witnessed to-day the feeding of some 10,000 children of men at the front. The distribution was excellently organised. Later I saw the distribution of vegetables to the necessitous.

These days of anxious waiting are taken with quiet resolution and much good humour.

Brussels, Wednesday.

The gallantry of the Belgian resistance has astonished the world. It has surprised the Belgians themselves. It would be a mistake to look for its source only in the reconstitution of the Army, a matter of the last few years; or to find in it a justification of war, or a plea for national military service as the regenerator of racial vigour.

The war is only the opportunity for the expression of a new Belgian democratic spirit. The new service conditions have been merely one of the agencies by which the idea of the individual right to a greater share in self-government, and the idea of the necessary condition for such government, national independence, have been disseminated.

If the Belgians are fighting heroically, it is because they are fighting for an independence which means not simply a national flag and a coloured space on the map, but individual liberty. They are defending, each man for himself and his neighbour, a responsible share in an increasingly popular Government. The inspiration of the national resistance has been the consciousness in each man of his share of liberty already gained. This democratic spirit has given life and vivid purpose to the military machine.

For the time all difference of party is sunk in securing the primary condition of liberty, racial independence, and the deliverance from the threat of that greatest enemy of freedom and individual enterprise, the military autocracy of Prussia. For the time, that can be the only conscious idea. But the liberal and more intellectual elements must be rejoicing in the realisation that the splendid effect of the new spirit is already justifying the democratic movement by which a share of popular responsibility has been gained in the past. They may well be looking forward to a time when the people will be considered to have earned by their heroism in arms a yet greater part in their own government.

The association of M. Vandervelde with the ministry has done much to identify the new spirit of democracy with the central idea of national existence. It is symbolical of the fact that the cause of Belgium is the cause of her people. An ardent advocate of peace and international friendship, he is known to have been one of the most resolutely convinced that, in this crisis of her fate, Belgium could be content with no formal protest, that she must fight for her independence to the last man. (It remains for history to emphasise the measure of political wisdom that the King showed at this crisis, in strengthening the influence of his own resolution, never to allow a free passage to the Germans, by the inclusion in the councils of the nation, of a personality politically antagonistic, but inspired by a patriotism and intellectual power second to none.)

In a country hitherto supposed to have been exceptionally under the influence of clerical domination it is significant to note the very small part that the Church has taken in the time of great emotional strain. In few of the organisations, civil and military, preparatory and corrective, established to meet the crisis, has the Church taken the lead.

Even the Boy Scouts, as a small instance, who loom large in the administrative life of Brussels for the time being, and who have hitherto been divided into hostile camps by Church and lay divisions, have sunk their differences, and are absorbed into the non-sectarian and civil machinery. It will be interesting to see what effect the loss of grip of the Church at this crucial moment may have upon her position when the new Belgian national spirit, confirmed by trial, can turn its energies again to problems of government and personal liberty.

The renaissance, or rather reassertion, is not confined to men. Women are taking a prominent part, and that not only in replacing men in subordinate work. It has not been elsewhere stated, but I have been assured by several of the wounded that much of the power of resistance in the Liége forts is due to the women of the town of Liége, who twice a day risk their lives in visiting the forts, bringing provisions and new heart.

With such wives and mothers there is little reason to fear that the new spirit will be limited to one generation, or can be accounted for as merely the reaction from a war fever. The war will but harden it into manhood.