Chapter VII: Antwerp and Malines

The passage of the great armies across the frontier and through eastern France could not be approached. For the moment, west Flanders, behind the German lines, offered no comfortable footing. There seemed a prospect, however, that Antwerp might be immediately besieged. My journey there was further justified by the chance of discharging a useful public mission. I started by Flushing; spent a day sailing with some Zeeland fishermen; and thence, as the railway to Antwerp was interrupted, completed the journey by boat and irregular transport.

Saint Nicholas, Friday.

Holland is friendly. There is only one opinion among the fishermen, sailors, and peasants of the south.

Picturesque fellows they are, with their black caps, mahogany faces, earrings, and gold brooches; and the women, with their white head-dresses, black silk wings, and brown necks and arms, with coral and gold bangles.

No doubt in their minds. 'Anything but the German flag! We'll stay as we are, if possible. If not, we'll be English for preference!'

The Dutch soldiers on the frontier take the same view: 'Any fate but Prussia!' But they have a fear: 'In other countries this is an officer's war; not of the people. Who knows what 'they' will decide up there! But, as far as we have a voice, no traffic with Germany!'--and then usually follows an anecdote concerning a recent civic snub to a member of the royal family, which need not be set out.

There is strong repudiation of the story that German troops have been allowed across Dutch Limburg: 'They were refugees, all who passed; and, of course, we welcome all such. Why, we even have the German Crown Prince's family at the Hague.' (This is generally believed!)

A Dutch fishing-smack, with an Irish skipper, put me across yesterday, Thursday, on to the south bank of the Scheldt. A warm sleepy sunset, and a drowsy peaceful little toy port.

A burst of warlike energy had carried the fishermen as far as the making of wire entanglements; but gaps, large enough for the passing of the stouter burghers, had been considerately left.

I travelled some distance on a goods truck. When it halted, a few idle, polite sentries, anxious to avoid responsibility, passed me on to a cavalry patrol. Pleasant, talkative fellows, they handed me over in turn, on the frontier, to a company of mounted Belgian volunteers with whom they had been fraternising.

These had as yet seen no fighting themselves; but there was only one subject of talk, the Highlanders: 'There are 20,000 of them, and they pipe all the time! At Mons they played while the rest shot, and the pipers can play with one hand and shoot with the other; it must be terrible!' I had this story ten times over.

And again, of the British: 'They are uncanny fellows! Why, even in hopeless positions on a retreat they never go on retiring till they are told to!'

The patrol was without its officer. It is a tragic little episode, illustrative of the conditions of war. His mother was Dutch; and she lay dying just across the frontier, in Holland. As a Belgian officer, he could not cross to see her in uniform or with arms, or he would be imprisoned. If he crossed as a civilian, he would be treated as a deserter. He was away, trying, in vain, to get some relaxation of the laws governing neutral territory. Only a mile or two off, and yet he must be too late.

As no passenger train to Antwerp would leave before next day, one of my new friends packed me into a van, one of a long train of vans on trucks going up with supplies to the front. The intention was to join the main line at St. Nicholas, and take the train thence in the morning to Antwerp. But as the supply train ran on to near Malines, there was every reason for going with it.

A few of the Malines residents were creeping back, in the dusk, to the empty town. The Belgians have shown remarkable pertinacity in these 'interval' returns. A father and son, sleeping in their cart on the road, gave me a lift into the town.

Malines was deserted. It was the night of an interval between the retirement of the Germans and the resumption of advance by the Belgians. But the German bombardment continued, directed obviously at the destruction of the church and the empty buildings. At intervals the guns resumed throughout the night; but their fire was ill-directed.

As we were threading our way through the streets, a clatter of hoofs warned us to take shelter. We hurried into the empty church. In the dark, through the door, we heard, and saw in the faint light, a few peasants walking past with hands raised, driven by some mounted Uhlans. Four of the peasants were left sitting hunched up on the steps. After long, anxious moments the patrol clattered away, firing wantonly at the windows of the church; and again firing in the distance.

During our wait, to let them get clear away, there was the deafening report of a shell bursting not far from the church; and plaster rattled down from the roof.

Much of the town was in ruins; swaths through the houses, cleared away to free the fire from the Belgian forts. And the prominent buildings, public and private, had evidently provided targets for the German guns.

To-day I heard that, while I was getting clear of the town, a very gallant rescue was being made by four Belgian ambulance men. They ran cars to the river, crossed a small pontoon, left by the Germans, on foot, and succeeded in carrying eight wounded Belgians, left in a little schoolhouse behind the German lines, back across the pontoon to the cars. They had been lying there untended.

The Belgian troops, or what I saw of them as I worked back to the railway this morning, seemed in excellent heart. The repulse of the Germans two days ago, and the strength of the fortress behind them, have gone far to remove the anxiety that inevitably followed their heavy losses in the recent field actions and the growing consciousness of hopelessly inferior numbers.

Many of them belonged to the fresh divisions, the flower of the heroic little army. At last they know 'where the English are,' and 'what the French are doing,' and the vague and intimidating hugeness of their own task has contracted to a definite, perceptible plan of campaign.

An eye-witness tells me the retreat from Louvain was conducted in splendid order and in high spirits. The Germans followed till they came under the fire of the outermost fort.

To-day the little Belgians were as cordial and ready to smile as in the first days after Liége.

In the grey morning to-day the country near the Belgian lines was an extraordinary sight. Already the light was flashing from the water of slight, precautionary inundations; and there are whole tracts ready to follow suit. Chateaux destroyed, for purposes of defensive fire; woods cut down; trees, which obstructed the ranges, hacked away; a country already half devastated, as if by an enemy.

But the success outside Malines had reassured the peasants. They could be seen dribbling slowly back to their cottages in unobtrusive clusters on road and field.

A troop train, crammed with soldiers sitting close on the floor of cattle-trucks, many of them of the volunteer army, brought me back towards the headquarters. Troops were constantly leaving us, and fresh truckloads being added: all in good heart, and full of individual exploits. We were banged about, and shunted here and there among guns and ammunition trains.

At one point the firing sounded only just across the field. The train stopped, and several trucks emptied in little coloured floods of soldiers into the wet fields. The men doubled in open order, just over the edge, out of sight through the green park-like trees in the sunlight. The scattered fire gradually drew away; and we moved slowly on again.

Antwerp, Friday night.

At St. Nicholas, the headquarters of the General commanding on the west, I ran again into the uneasy, strained atmosphere of the towns near the fighting line. It was familiar at Namur and elsewhere. Uncertainty, constant coming and going, parade, spy-mania, secrecy, and military rule. In such places the civilian is like a child confused in the middle of a race-course; something to be herded and scuffled out of the way; suspicion of others is the only safe outlet for his panic feeling. We do not know this condition yet in England. May we never experience it! To catch an eye is to create an enemy. A sudden movement brings a rush of the silent crowd. An outward routine; an inward volcano of fear, mistrust, and over-strained nerves.

The soldiers at the front, if one can get there, are friendly enough. Only for the moment, when men are going into, or are actually in action, does the 'war-mask' make a man remote and unaccountable. Out of action the more humorous northerner drops it gladly; the southerner, less easily. Farther back from the front, at the anxious, waiting, military headquarters, or in the town or village strung to snapping point of nervous tension by the immediate uncertainty and peril, is the danger-point for the looker-on. I made the experiment, as an obvious stranger, of sitting outside a restaurant. In five minutes a white-whiskered, respectable magistrate sat down opposite, and glared dangerously. "You are a renegade!" I made no answer. A crowd began to collect. "You are a German!" It was dangerous to let him go on. Better attract the police than risk the crowd. "You may have the right to question me, sir: you have none to insult me"--and I stood up suddenly, upsetting him behind the heavy little table. A regulation "arrest" followed; the first. In two hours I was interrogated seven times by different descriptions of uniformed and civilian officialdom; and three times was escorted to various military authorities, who, at last, became not unnaturally petulant. Finally I had to retire within doors. This is merely illustrative of the atmosphere; for the individuals remained undemonstrative.

Troop trains poured in and out of the station. Boy-sentries, struggling under huge rifles, paraded the cobbles and mustered at the corners.

At last, the single train to Antwerp. Nobody but inhabitants were allowed to enter by it. The "word of the day" was whispered me with infinite secrecy. The women, waiting to identify the wounded, who passed in constant groups from the trains, swarmed over the platform for farewells. Then a dark journey under a red moon; a passing sight of camps, and soldiers moving without lights; spaces of water.

And the end of it all, an easy, normal, almost careless passage into a comfortable town, sure of itself and its defenders. For Antwerp lives perfectly tranquilly. Only at night are the dark streets and the unseen movement of people strange. Since the audacious, and fatal, passage of the Zeppelin, no lights are allowed, even in windows, after eight. It must have been a terrifying sight in the dark sky. The brightly lighted airship close over the sleeping houses, so light that the number on board could be reckoned. It drifted silently down wind, over the roofs, well inside the defending circle. Then the roar of the propeller began; the populace rushed out, and there followed a succession of shattering explosions from its ten unseen and ill-directed bombs. Now precautions are taken; and the great silver pencil of the searchlight has swung and passed all to-night over our heads.

No signs of a town besieged.

Prices low, no war feeling, a steady traffic. Only rarely the rattle of an armoured motor through the street; for nearly all military movements are made at night. Except for the universal error of the withholding of news, the control of the population is admirable in its restraint. We have no "nerves" here yet.

Antwerp, Saturday.

The Germans have been forced to keep a retaining army in front of the Belgian lines at Malines. How big this is, it is impossible at present to say. It seems to be no more than a retaining force, protecting communications.

On the other hand, the Belgians have half of their army intact, some 60,000, fresh and in good heart; with the remainder of the troops from Liége, Louvain, and Namur, now reconstituted and keen to keep up their splendid record.

It will take an army of 150,000 to invest Antwerp, with its double line of forts.

There is a vague rumour that a secondary and larger force is advancing directly upon Antwerp from the east, independent of the force already facing Malines on the south, and that the big siege guns are being brought up. The eventuality must be contemplated. The Landsturm (reserve army) is already at Liége. The Germans have the reserves to spare, and it would be consistent with their plan to follow their swift-moving columns at the front with a second supporting army, to occupy the conquered territory, already almost evacuated by the advanced troops, and invest Antwerp. If the troops can be spared from Prussia and France, the effort will be made. But not, I think, until the blow at France has failed.

The importance of Antwerp, as the final seat of the Belgian Government and the last base from which the army can operate, cannot be overrated. With Antwerp lost, the army, and all the possibilities of its position upon the German flank, threatening the communications, would be baseless; and must be forced to surrender, or to cut its way through to Ostend.

Germany will mask Antwerp for the present. And later on a siege of Antwerp may not be calculated in terms of Liége. There the Germans attacked with infantry and light field-guns. They have now brought up their heavy siege guns. The rapid fall of the forts of Namur is the measure of the difference.

The outer line of Antwerp forts are one and a half miles apart, alternating fort and redoubt. The silencing of one fort by the heavy guns would leave a gap of three miles, through which troops could be poured.

The Belgian Field Army would have to hold the gap or gaps; behind them the second line of forts would repeat the resistance, in their turn, under increased difficulties. It might cost a number of lives, but of these the Germans are careless. A big army with siege guns could manage it, and not take unduly long.

It will be seen that it is of the utmost importance to protect Antwerp, not by strengthening the defence more than has already been done, but by the operations of a relieving force, acting from the coast, upon the left of the German investing army.

The presence of British troops and ships at Ostend, which has been announced officially in all the Belgian and French papers, has already begun to effect its purpose; by reassuring the Belgians, and distracting the Germans from pouring all their reinforcements on to the front in France.

It is also forcing the light, skirmishing German parties of advance, which threatened the extreme left of the Allied armies, from Courtrai to Dunkirk, to contract.

(The anticipations here outlined have since been borne out closely by the actual events of the fall of Antwerp.)

Sunday.

The Germans resumed their bombardment of Malines yesterday. The church tower provided their chief object. They were successfully kept out of the town.

The news is confirmed that something like a "whole army corps" has been diverted from its advance across the frontier by the spirited sally of the Belgians.

I was down on the lines west of the city again to-day. The troops are in fine spirits at their success. The British sympathy and admiration have been greatly appreciated. The tribute of the House of Commons is spread by the journals broadcast, in large print.

At my small point of view there was only some slight skirmishing. Since four o'clock yesterday the big guns have been having a rest. Some peasants, captured and released, report the retirement of German cavalry upon Louvain. These peasants have had seven days of terror. They, including some women, have been driven at the head of a small German contingent to and fro, threatened with death behind and in front. They relate that those who fell out were shot. Some of them were allowed to stop last night on the steps of the Cathedral, as they were being herded through deserted Malines. They must have been the same whom we saw pass, and heard afterwards murmuring there, while we waited concealed inside.

The large number of Belgian wounds are in the legs; possibly from lying behind two little elevated screens, in place of entrenching; but the German rifle-fire is still low.

The Germans, advancing _en masse_, are constantly described as firing from the hip. In front of the trench which I visited, the ground was cut up by rifle-bullets in a continuous line, a few feet short of the raised bank. Towards the end of the hour I spent there, came a sudden ten minutes of furious firing. The hail of bullets whipped against the far side bank in travelling waves of rustling sound, like the passing of sharp gusts over a moor.

Later.

The air is yellow and heavy from the continuous bombardment of the past days. Sudden showers of rain, out of cloudless skies, come from the same cause. The guns began again to-night.

Ostend, Monday.

The Belgian Army was active this morning. Already at dawn as I passed out of Antwerp through the wire entanglements and small inundations about the military camps, they were on the move for another attack. The guns were in action to the south of us.

The country, in the line of Ghent, is now free. It was possible to travel almost to the French frontier before the alarm of Uhlans began. But the villages, populous and filled with panic last week, are now half deserted and melancholy. The refugees pour aimlessly to the coast and back again, according to the rumours. The railways run, advancing and retreating, according to the movements of the enemy. In the morning trains may run straight, in the evening make a cautious loop. A curious situation, significant of the double occupation of the "open" territory.

I wished to clear up some of the mystery enveloping the northern end of the French frontier. I therefore passed through Ghent westward. Last week I left a German cavalry column disappearing into the silence of "no official news" into the neighbourhood of Courtrai. This afternoon I met news of them, or their like, returning in the same quarter, as I made a hurried run to the border. It was near Ypres that the peasants met us with warnings "The Germans have been sighted, and are expected here."

From a safe retreat, in a wood on rising ground, we watched a small line of German wagons, probably of wounded, winding into and out at the other end of the short village street. It was accompanied and followed by cavalry and a few cars.

It has been heartening to see any Germans facing in the right direction, before I descended once again upon Ostend.