Chapter VI: Part 6

"It's always the same. They are always attacking us," he cursed. "Of course, it's true that we repulse them. They are but English and they can't break the German army. But how are we to win the war if it is always the English who attack?"

"Do you still think Germany can win?" I asked.

"No!" He fairly spat at me. "We can't beat you now. But you can't beat us! This war will go on until your pig-headed Lloyd George gives in."

"Or," I suggested gently, "until your pig-headed Junker Government gives in."

"They never will!" he said, a little proudly, but sadly too. "Every man will be killed in the army--my two sons, all--and we will starve before it is all over!"

[Sidenote: The Germans no longer hope for a big victory.]

The German citizens, in that section at least, had given up hope of being able to score the big victory that was in every mind when the war started. What the outcome would be did not seem to be clear to them. All they knew was that the work meant misery for them, and that, as far as they could see, this misery would continue on and on indefinitely. They had lost confidence in the newspapers. It was plain to be seen that the stereotyped rubber-stamped kind of official news that got into the papers did not satisfy them. Many's the time I heard bitter curses heaped upon the Hobenzollerns by lips that were flabby and colorless from starvation.

[Sidenote: News of unrestricted submarine warfare.]

There was much excitement among them when, early in 1917, the news spread that unrestricted submarine warfare was to be resumed. Old Fritz came over to me with a newspaper in his hand and his eyes fairly popping with excitement.

"This will end it!" he declared. "We are going to starve you out, you English."

"You'll bring America in," I told him.

"No, no!" he said, quite confidently. "The Yankees won't come in. They are making too much money as it is. They won't fight. See, here it is in the paper. It is stated clearly here that the United States will not fight. It doesn't dare to fight!"

But when the news came that the United States had actually declared war they were a sad lot. I took the first opportunity to pump old Fritz about the views of his companions.

"It's bad, bad," he said, shaking his head dolefully.

"Then you are afraid of the Americans, after all?" I said.

[Sidenote: Why Fritz was sorry to have America in the war.]

Fritz laughed, with a short, contemptuous note. "No, it is not that," he said. "England will be starved out before the Americans can come in and then it will all be over. But--just between us, you and me--most of us here were intending to go to America, after the war, where we would be free from all this. But--now the United States won't let us in after the war!"

I shall never forget the day that the papers announced the refusal of the English labor delegates to go to Stockholm. One excited miner struck me across the face with the open newspaper in his hand.

[Sidenote: Hatred of the English.]

"Always, always the same!" he almost screamed. "The English block everything. They will not join and what good can come now of the conference? They will not be content and the war must go on!"

[Sidenote: Shortage in necessities of life.]

The food shortage reached a crisis about the time that I managed, after three futile attempts, to escape. Frequently, when the people took their bread tickets to the stores they found that supplies had been exhausted and that there was nothing to be obtained. Prices had gone sky-high. Bacon, for instance, $2.50 and more a pound. A cake of soap cost 85 cents. Cleanliness became a luxury. These prices are indicative of the whole range and it is not hard to see the struggle these poor mine people were having to keep alive at all.

[Sidenote: Prisoners receive food from England.]

[Sidenote: Germans wonder at food of starving England.]

At this time our parcels from England were coming along fairly regularly and we were better off for food than the Germans themselves. Owing to the long shift we were compelled to do in the mines we fell into the habit of "hoarding" our food parcels and carrying a small lunch to the mines each day. These lunches had to be carefully secreted or the Germans would steal them. They could not understand how it was that starving England could send food abroad to us. The sight of these lunches helped to undermine their faith in the truth of the official information they read in the newspapers.

[Sidenote: Wages spent for soap.]

Our lot at the mines was almost unendurable. We were supposed to receive four and a half marks (90 cents) a week for our labor, but there was continual "strafing" to reduce the amount. If we looked sideways at a "stagger," we were likely to receive a welt with a pick handle and a strafe of several marks. Sometimes we only received a mark or two for a week's work. Most of this we spent for soap. It was impossible to work in the mine and not become indescribably dirty, and soap became an absolute necessity.

[Sidenote: Uncomfortable quarters.]

We lived under conditions of great discomfort in the camp, 250 of us in 30 x 30 quarters. There were two stoves in the building in which coke was burned, but the place was terribly cold. The walls at all seasons were so damp that pictures tacked up on them mildewed in a short time. Our bunks contained straw which was never replenished and we all became infested with fleas. Some nights it was impossible to sleep on account of the activity of these pests. On account of the dampness and cold we always slept in our clothes.

[Sidenote: Cruelty of discipline.]

[Sidenote: Seven plan to escape.]

Discipline was rigorous and cruel. We were knocked around and given terms of solitary confinement and made to stand at attention for hours at the least provocation. Many of the prisoners were killed--murdered by the cruelty. It became more than flesh and blood could stand. One day seven of us got together and made a solemn compact to escape. We would keep at it, we decided, no matter what happened, until we got away. Six of us are now safely at home. The seventh, my chum, J. W. Nicholson, is still a prisoner.

I made four attempts to escape before I finally succeeded. The first time a group of us made a tunnel out under the barricade, starting beneath the flooring of the barracks. We crawled out at night and had put fifteen miles between us and the camp before we were finally caught. I got seven days' "black" that time, solitary confinement in a narrow stone cell, without a ray of light, on black bread and water.

[Sidenote: Two attempts to escape fail and are punished.]

The second attempt was again by means of a tunnel. A chum of mine, William Raesides, who had come over with the 8th C. M. R.'s, was my companion that time. We were caught by bloodhounds after twenty miles and they gave us ten days' "black."

[Sidenote: The third attempt.]

The third attempt was made in company with my chum Nicholson, and we planned it out very carefully. Friends in England sent through suits of civilian clothes to us.

The next day we dressed up for the attempt by putting on our "civies" first and then drawing our prisoner's uniform over them. When we got to the mine we took off the uniform and slipped the mining clothes on over the others. We worked all day. Coming up from work in the late afternoon, Nick and I held back until everyone else had gone. We went up alone in the hoist and tore off our mining clothes as we ascended, dropping each piece back into the pit as we discarded it.

It was fairly dark when we got out of the hoist and the guards did not pay much attention to us. There was a small building at the mine head where we prisoners washed and dressed after work and a separate exit for the civilians. Nick and I took the civilian exit and walked out into the street without any interference.

[Sidenote: Near the Dutch border.]

We could both speak enough German to pass, so we boldly struck out for the Dutch border, which was about 85 miles away, traveling only during the night. We had a map that a miner had sold to us for a cake of soap and we guided our course by that. We got to the border line without any trouble whatever, but were caught through overconfidence, due to a mistake in the map. Close to the line was a milepost indicating that a certain Dutch town was two miles west. The map indicated that this town was four miles within the Dutch border.

[Sidenote: Captured and punished again.]

"We're over!" we shouted when we saw that welcome milepost. Throwing caution aside, we marched boldly forward, right into a couple of sentries with fixed bayonets!

It was two weeks' "black" they meted out to us that time. The Kommandant's eyes snapped as he passed sentence. I knew he would have been much more strict on me as the three-time offender had it not been that the need for coal was so dire that labor, even the labor of a recalcitrant prisoner, was valuable.

"No prisoner has yet escaped from this Kommando!" he shouted, "and none shall. Any further attempts will be punished with the utmost severity."

[Sidenote: A new method of getaway planned.]

Nevertheless they took the precaution to break up my partnership with Nicholson, putting him on the night shift. I immediately went into partnership with Private W. M. Masters, of Toronto, and we planned to make our getaway by an entirely new method.

The building at the mine where we changed clothes before and after work was equipped with a bathroom in one corner, with a window with one iron bar intersecting. Outside the window was a bush and beyond that open country. A sentry was always posted outside the building, but he had three sides to watch and we knew that, if we could only move that bar, we could manage to elude the sentry. So we started to work on the bar.

[Sidenote: Four months' steady work.]

I had found a bit of wire which I kept secreted about me and every night, after washing up, we would dig for a few minutes at the brickwork around the bar. It was slow, tedious and disappointing work. Gradually, however, we scooped the brick out around the bar and after nearly four months' application we had it so loosened that a tug would pull it out.

[Sidenote: Night in a bog.]

The next day Masters and I were the last in the bathroom, and when the sentry's round had taken him to the other side of the building, we wrenched out the bar, raised the window and wriggled through head first, breaking our fall in the bush outside. We got through without attracting attention and ran across the country into a swamp, where we soon lost our way and wallowed around all night up to our knees in the bog, suffering severely from the cold and damp. Early in our flight the report of a gun from the camp warned us that our absence had been discovered. Our adventure in the swamp saved us from capture, for the roads were patrolled by cavalry that night.

We found our way out of the swamp near morning, emerging on the western side. By the sale of more soap to miners we had acquired another map and a compass, so we had little difficulty in determining our whereabouts and settling our course for the border. For food we had each brought along ten biscuits, the result of several weeks' hoarding.

That day we stayed on the edge of the swamp, never stirring for a moment from the shelter of a clump of bushes. One slept while the other watched. No one came near us and we heard no signs of our pursuers. Night came on most mercifully dark and we struck out along the roads at a smart clip.

We traveled all night, making probably twenty-five miles. It was necessary, we knew, to make the most of our strength in the earlier stages of the dash. As our food gave out we would be less capable of covering the ground. So we spurred ourselves on to renewed effort and ate the miles up in a sort of frenzy.

This kept up for four days and nights. We kept going as hard as our waning strength would permit and we were cautious in the extreme. Even at that we had many narrow escapes.

[Sidenote: Crossing the Lippe River.]

Our greatest difficulty was when we struck the Lippe River. Our first plan was to swim across, but we found that we had not the strength left for this feat. We lost a day as a result. The second night we found a scow tied up along the bank and got across that way.

[Sidenote: Rapid progress, though starving.]

By this time we were slowly starving on our feet, we were wet through continuously, and such sleep as we got was broken and fitful. Before we had been four days out we were reduced to gaunt, tattered, dirty scarecrows. We staggered as we walked and sometimes one of us would drop on the road through sheer weakness. Through it all we kept up our frenzy for speed and it was surprising how much ground we forced ourselves to cover in a night. And, no matter how much the pangs of hunger gnawed at us, we conserved our fast dwindling supply of biscuit. Less than two biscuits a day was our limit!

Finally we reached a point that I recognized from my previous attempt to escape. It was about four miles from the border. We had two biscuits left between us. The next day we feasted royally and extravagantly on those two biscuits. No longer did we need to hoard our supplies, for the next night would tell the tale.

[Sidenote: Safe past the German sentries.]

By the greatest good fortune night came on dark and cloudy. Not a star showed in the sky. We crawled cautiously and painfully toward the border. At every sound we stopped and flattened out. Twice we saw sentries close at hand, but both times we got by safely. Finally we reached what we judged must be the last line of sentries. We had crawled across a ploughed field and reached a road lined on both sides with trees where sentries were passing up and down.

"It's the border!" we whispered.

When the nearest sentry had reached the far end of his beat we doubled up like jack-knives and dashed across that road, plunging through the trees on the other side. Not a sound came from the sentries. We struck across fields with delirious speed, we reeled along like drunken men, laughing and gasping and sometimes reaching out for a mutual handshake.

[Sidenote: Across the border in Holland.]

Then we got a final scare. Marching up the road toward us was what looked like a white sheet. Our nerves were badly shattered, and that moving thing froze my blood, but it was a scare of brief duration. The sheet soon resolved itself into two girls in white dresses, walking up the road with a man. We scurried to the side of the road as soon as we made them out. Then I decided to test the matter of our whereabouts and stepped out to accost them.

"Have you a match?" I asked in German.

The man did not understand me!

We were in Holland--_and free_!

* * * * *

Little was heard from the Belgians themselves of the hardships and suffering endured by them under the rule of the Germans. Occasionally, however, an eye-witness from the outside was able to present some aspects of the terrible picture. The narrative of such an eye-witness is given in the following pages.

UNDER GERMAN RULE IN FRANCE AND BELGIUM

J. P. WHITAKER

[Sidenote: The German iron heel on Roubaix.]

Toward the end of March, 1915, a distinct change became noticeable in the policy of the German military authorities, and for the first time the people of Roubaix began to feel the iron heel. The allied Governments had formally declared their intention of blockading Germany and the German Army had been given a sharp lesson at Neuve Chapelle. Whether these two events had anything to do with the change, or whether it was merely a coincidence, I do not know; the fact remains that our German governors who had hitherto treated us with tolerable leniency chose about this time to initiate a regime of stringent regulation and repression.

[Sidenote: Identification papers.]

The first sign of the new policy was the issue of posters calling on all men, women, and children over the age of 14 to go to the Town Hall and take out identification papers, while all men between 17 and 50 were required also to obtain a control card.

Up to this time I had escaped any interference from the Germans, perhaps because I scarcely ventured into the streets for the first two months of the German occupation, and possibly also because, from a previous long residence in Roubaix, I spoke French fluently. Strangely enough, though I went to the Town Hall with the rest and supplied true particulars of my age and nationality, papers were issued to me as a matter of course, and never during the whole two years and more of my presence in their midst did the enemy molest me in any way.

[Sidenote: Control cards for men of military age.]

The only incident which throws any light on this curious immunity occurred about the middle of 1915. Like all other men of military age, I was required to present myself once a month at a public hall, in order to have my control card, which was divided into squares for the months of the year, marked in the proper space with an official stamp "Kontrol, July," or "August," or whatever the month might be. We were summoned for this process by groups, first those from 17 to 25, then those from 25 to 35, and so on. Hundreds of young fellows would gather in a room, and one by one, as their names were called, would take their cards to be stamped by a noncommissioned officer sitting at a table on the far side of the room. On the occasion I have in mind, the noncommissioned officer said to me, "You are French, aren't you?" I answered, "No." "Are you Belgian?" "No," again. "You are Dutch, then?" A third time I replied "No."

At this stage an officer who had been sauntering up and down the room smoking a cigarette came to the table, took up my card, and turning to the man behind the table, remarked, "It's all right. He's an American." I did not trouble to enlighten him. That is probably why I enjoyed comparative liberty.

[Sidenote: The German policy of enslavement.]

Enslavement is part of the deliberate policy of the Germans in France. It began by the taking of hostages at the very outset of their possession of Roubaix. A number of the leading men in the civic and business life of the town were marked out and compelled to attend by turns at the Town Hall, to be shot on the spot at the least sign of revolt among the townspeople.

[Sidenote: Treatment of girl mill operatives who refuse to work.]

Not a few of the mill owners were ordered to weave cloth for the invaders, and on their refusal were sent to Germany and held to ransom. Many of the mill operatives, quite young girls, were directed to sew sandbags for the German trenches. They, too, refused, but the Germans had their own ways of dealing with what they regarded as juvenile obstinacy. They dragged the girls to a disused cinema hall, and kept them there without food or water until their will was broken.

Barbarity reached its climax in the so-called "deportations." They were just slave raids, brutal and undisguised.

[Sidenote: The deportations or slave raids.]

[Sidenote: Taken to an unknown fate.]

The procedure was this: The town was divided into districts. At 3 o'clock in the morning a cordon of troops would be drawn round a district--the Prussian Guard and especially, I believe, the Sixty-ninth Regiment, played a great part in this diabolical crime--and officers and noncommissioned officers would knock at every door until the household was roused. A handbill, about octavo size, was handed in, and the officer passed on to the next house. The handbill contained printed orders that every member of the household must rise and dress immediately, pack up a couple of blankets, a change of linen, a pair of stout boots, a spoon and fork, and a few other small articles, and be ready for the second visit in half an hour. When the officer returned, the family were marshaled before him, and he picked out those whom he wanted with a curt "You will come," "And you," "And you." Without even time for leave-taking, the selected victims were paraded in the street and marched to a mill on the outskirts of the town. There they were imprisoned for three days, without any means of communication with friends or relatives, all herded together indiscriminately and given but the barest modicum of food. Then, like so many cattle, they were sent away to an unknown fate.

[Sidenote: Girls put to farm labor.]

Months afterward some of them came back, emaciated and utterly worn out, ragged and verminous, broken in all but spirit. I spoke with numbers of the men. They had been told by the Germans, they said, that they were going to work on the land. They found that only the women and girls were put to farm labor.

[Sidenote: Men do construction work in Ardennes.]

[Sidenote: Very little food.]

[Sidenote: No complaints permitted.]

The men were taken to the French Ardennes and compelled to mend roads, man sawmills and forges, build masonry, and toil at other manual tasks. Rough hutments formed their barracks. They were under constant guard both there and at their work, and they were marched under escort from the huts to work and from work to the huts. For food each man was given a two-pound loaf of German bread every five days, a little boiled rice, and a pint of coffee a day. At 8 o'clock in the morning, after a breakfast consisting of a slice of bread and a cup of coffee, they went to work. At 4 o'clock in the afternoon they returned for the night and took their second meal--dinner, tea, and supper all in one. Often they were buffeted and generally ill-used by their taskmasters. If they fell ill, cold water, internally or externally, was the invariable remedy. Once a commission came to see them at work, but they had been warned beforehand that any man who complained of his treatment would suffer for it. One of them was bold enough to protest to the visitors against a particularly flagrant case of ill-usage. That man disappeared a few days later.

[Sidenote: The Belgian frontier is closed.]

Long before this the food problem had become acute in Roubaix. Simultaneously with the establishment of the system of personal control over the inhabitants the Germans closed the frontier between France and Belgium and forbade us to approach within half a mile of the border line. The immediate effect of this isolation was to reduce to an insignificant trickle the copious stream of foodstuffs which until then poured in from Belgium--not the starving Belgium of fiction, but the well supplied Belgium of fact.

[Sidenote: Fabulous prices for meat.]

Butchers and bakers and provision dealers had to shut their shops, and the town became almost wholly dependent on supplies brought in by the American Relief Commission. Fresh meat was soon unobtainable, except by those few people who could afford to pay fabulous prices for joints smuggled across the frontier. Months ago meat cost 32 francs a kilogram (about 13 shillings a pound) and an egg cost 1 franc 25 (a shilling). Obviously such things were beyond the reach of the bulk of the people, and had it not been for the efforts of the Relief Commission we should all have starved.

[Sidenote: Foodstuffs supplied by the Relief Commission.]

The commission opened a food depot, a local committee issued tickets for the various articles, and rich and poor alike had to wait their turn at the depot to procure the allotted rations. The chief foodstuffs supplied were: Rice, flaked maize, bacon, lard, coffee, bread, condensed milk (occasionally), haricot beans, lentils, and a very small allowance of sugar. Potatoes could not be bought at any price.

[Sidenote: The Germans intercept mine food.]

Unfortunately, though I regret that I should have to record it, there is evidence that by some means or other the German Army contrived to intercept for itself a part of the food sent by the American Commission. One who had good reason to know told me that more than once trainloads which, according to a notification sent to him, had left Brussels for Roubaix failed to arrive. I know also that analysis of the bread showed that in some cases German rye flour, including 30 per cent of sawdust, had been substituted for the white American flour, producing an indigestible putty-like substance which brought illness and death to many. Indeed, the mortality from this cause was so heavy at one period that all the grave diggers in the town could not keep pace with it.

[Sidenote: Germans eager to buy food.]

One could easily understand how great must have been the temptation to the Germans to tap for themselves the food which friends abroad had sent for their victims. It is a significant fact that soldiers in Roubaix were eager to buy rice from those who had obtained it at the depot at four francs (3s 4d) the pound in order, as they said, "to send it home." I shall describe later how utterly different were the conditions in Belgium as I saw them.

Meagre as were the food supplies for the civilians in Roubaix, those issued to the German soldiers toward the end of my stay were little better.

At first the householders, on whom the soldiers were billeted, were required to feed them and to recover the cost from the municipal authorities.

[Sidenote: Change of demeanor of soldiery.]

Of all the things I saw and heard in Roubaix and Lille none impressed me more than the wonderful change which came over the outlook and demeanor of the German soldiery between October, 1914, and October, 1915.

I had many opportunities of mingling with them, more, in fact, than I cared to have, for now and again during this period two or three of them were actually billeted on the good folk with whom I lodged.

[Sidenote: Already tired of war.]

I knew just sufficient of the German language to be able to chat with them, and they made no attempt to conceal from me their real feelings. I am merely repeating the statement made to me over and over again by many German soldiers when I say that the men in the ranks are thoroughly tired of the war, that they have abandoned all thought of conquest, and that they fight on only because they believe that their homes and families are at stake.

On that Autumn morning when the first German troops came into Roubaix they came flushed with victory, full of confidence in their strength, marching with their eyes fixed on Paris and London. They sang aloud as they swung through our streets. They sing no more. Instead, as I saw with my own eyes, many of them show in their faces the abject misery which is in their hearts.

[Sidenote: Expect end of war in November, 1916.]

Last year scores of them told me, quite independently, that the war would come to an end on November 17, 1916. How that date came to be fixed by the prophets nobody knew, but the belief in the prophecy was universal among the soldiers.

[Sidenote: Soldiers more courteous than officers.]

As a rule, the soldiers did not maltreat the civilians in Roubaix, except when they were acting under the orders of their officers; when, for example, they were tearing people from their homes to work as slaves. They had, however, the right of traveling without payment on the tramcars, and they frequently exercised this right to such an extent as to preclude the townsfolk from the use of the cars.

[Sidenote: Officers requisition supplies.]

Apart from that annoyance, there was little ground for complaint of the general behavior of the soldiers. The conduct of the officers was very different. For a long time they made a habit of requisitioning from shopkeepers and others supplies of food for which they had no intention of paying. One day an officer drove up in a trap to a shop kept by an acquaintance of mine and "bought" sardines, chocolate, bread, and fancy cakes to the value of about 200 francs (about $40). He produced a piece of paper and borrowed a pair of scissors with which to cut off a slip. On this slip he wrote a few words in German, and then, handing it to the shopkeeper, he went off with his purchases. The shopkeeper, on presenting the paper at the Kommandantur, was informed that the inscription ran, "For the loan of scissors, 200 francs," and that the signature was unknown. Payment was therefore refused. This case, I believe, was by no means an isolated one.

When an officer was billeted on a house, he would insist on turning the family out of the dining room and drawing room and sleeping in the best bedroom; sometimes he would eject people entirely from their home.

[Sidenote: A docile private soldier.]

By contrast the docile private soldier was almost a welcome guest. I remember well one quite friendly fellow who was lodged for some time in the same house as myself and some English over military age in the suburb of Croix. He came to me in great glee one day with a letter from his wife in which she warned him to beware of "the English cutthroats." She went on to give him a long series of instructions for his safety. He was to barricade his bedroom door every night, to sleep always with his knife under his pillow, and never to take anything we offered him to eat or drink.

[Sidenote: Few civilian offenses.]

Despite the temptations to crime and insubordination which naturally attend an idle manufacturing population of some 125,000 people, there were very few civilian offenses against the law, German or French, among the inhabitants of Roubaix.

[Sidenote: Time hangs heavily.]

Time hung heavily on our hands. Cut off from the outer world except by the occasional arrival of smuggled French and English newspapers, we spent our time reading and playing cards, and at the last I hoped I might never be reduced to this form of amusement again. In the two and a half years cut out of my life and completely wasted I played as many games of cards as will satisfy me for the rest of my existence.

[Sidenote: The gendarmerie called "Green devils."]

But even if the inhabitants, in their enforced idleness, had any temptation to be insubordinate, they had a far greater inducement to keep the law in the bridled savagery of the German gendarmerie. These creatures, who from the color of their uniform and the brutality of their conduct were known as the "green devils," seemed to revel in sheer cruelty. They scour the towns on bicycles and the outlying districts on horseback, always accompanied by a dog as savage as his master, and at the slightest provocation or without even the slenderest pretext they fall upon civilians with brutish violence.

[Sidenote: Women badly treated.]

It was not uncommon for one of these men to chase a woman on his bicycle, and when he had caught her, batter her head and body with the machine. Many times they would strike women with the flat of their sabres. One of them was seen to unleash his dog against an old woman, and laugh when the savage beast tore open the woman's flesh from thigh to knee.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Crossing Belgium.]

In January Mr. Whitaker crossed the line into Belgium with the aid of smuggler friends, traversed that country, chiefly on foot, and two months later escaped into Holland and so to England. In Belgium he was astonished to find what looked like prosperity when compared with conditions in the occupied provinces of France. After expressing gratitude to Belgian friends and a desire to tell only what is truth, he proceeds:

[Sidenote: No sign of privations.]

The first fact I have to declare is that nowhere in my wanderings did I see any sign of starvation. Nowhere did I notice such privation of food as I had known in Northern France. Near the French frontier, it is true, the meals I took in inns and private cottages were far from sumptuous, but as I drew nearer to the Dutch frontier the amount and variety of the food to be obtained changed in an ascending scale, until at Antwerp one could almost forget, so far as the table was concerned, that the world was at war.

[Sidenote: The diet at Roubaix, France.]

Let me give a few comparisons. At Roubaix, in France, at the time when I left in the first week of this year, my daily diet was as follows: Breakfast--coffee, bread and butter (butter was a luxury beyond the reach of the working people, who had to be content with lard); midday meal--vegetable soup, bread, boiled rice, and at rare intervals an egg or a tiny piece of fresh meat; supper--boiled rice and bread. Just over the border, in Belgium, the food conditions were a little better. The ticket system prevailed, and the villagers were dependent on the depots of the American Relief Commission, supplemented by local produce.

A little further, and one passed the line of demarkation between the etape--the part of Belgium which is governed by General von Denk, formerly commanding the troops at Valenciennes--and the governement general, under the command of General von Bissing.

[Sidenote: The first fresh meat in weeks.]

Here a distinct change was noticeable. My first meal in this area included fillet of beef, the first fresh meat I had tasted for weeks. Tickets were still needed to buy bread and other things supplied by the Relief Commission, but other foodstuffs could be bought without restriction.

[Sidenote: A dinner at Brussels.]

At Brussels the food supply seems to be nearly normal. My Sunday dinner there consisted of excellent soup, a generous helping of roast leg of mutton, potatoes, haricot beans, white bread, cheese, and jam, and wine or beer, as preferred; while for supper I had cold meat, fried potatoes, and bread.

[Sidenote: Food conditions at Antwerp.]

At Antwerp, with two French friends who accompanied me on my journey through Belgium, I walked into a middle-class cafe at midday. I ordered a steak with fried potatoes and my friends ordered pork chops. Without any question about tickets we were served. We added bread, cheese, and butter to complete the meal and washed it down with draft light beer. Later in the day we took supper in the same cafe--an egg omelette, fried potatoes, bread, cheese, and butter. And the cost of both meals together was less than the cost of the steak alone in Roubaix.

[Sidenote: Appearance of Brussels.]

The policy of the Germans appears to be to interfere as little as possible with the everyday life of the country. The fruits of this policy are seen in a remarkable degree in Brussels. All day long the main streets of the city are full of bustle and all the outward manifestations of prosperity.

[Sidenote: Business going on.]

Women in short, fashionable skirts, with high-topped fancy boots, stroll completely at their ease along the pavement, studying the smart things with which the drapers' shop windows are dressed. Jewelers' shops, provision stores, tobacconists, and the rest show every sign of "business as usual." I bought at quite a reasonable price a packet of Egyptian cigarettes, bearing the name of a well-known brand of English manufacture, and I recalled how, not many miles away in harassed France, I had seen rhubarb leaves hanging from upper windows to dry, so that the French smoker might use them instead of the tobacco which he could not buy. Even the sweetstuff shops had well-stocked windows.

[Sidenote: Theaters and cinema palaces open.]

The theaters, music halls, cinema palaces, and cafes of Brussels were open and crowded. On the second night of my visit I went with my two French companions to the Theatre Moliere and heard a Belgian company in Paul Hervieu's play, "La Course du Flambeau." The whole building was packed with Belgians, thoroughly enjoying the performance. So far as I could tell, the only reminder that we were in the fallen capital of an occupied country was the presence in the front row of the stalls of two German soldiers, whose business, so I learned, was to see that nothing disrespectful to Germany and her armies was allowed to creep into the play.

[Sidenote: An ordinary cinema performance.]

At another theater, according to the posters, "Veronique" was produced, and a third bill announced "The Merry Widow." At the Theatre de la Monnaie, which has been taken over by the Germans, operas and plays are given for the benefit of the soldiers and German civilians. One afternoon I spent a couple of hours in a cinema hall. A continuous performance was provided, and people came and went as they chose, but throughout the program the place was well filled. The films shown had no relation to the war. They were of the ordinary dramatic or comic types, and I fancy they were of pre-war manufacture. Nothing of topical interest was exhibited.

[Sidenote: Scenes in Antwerp like those in Brussels.]

All the scenes which I have described in Brussels were reproduced in Antwerp. There was a slightly closer supervision over the comings and goings of the inhabitants, but there was the same unreal atmosphere of contentment and real appearance of plenty. Though a good number of officers were in evidence, the military arm of Germany was not sufficiently displayed to produce any intimidation. Perhaps the most obvious mark, here and in the capital, that all was not normal was the complete absence of private motor cars and cabs from the streets.

[Sidenote: Belgium still has cattle.]

In the country districts two things struck me as unfamiliar after my long months in France. About Roubaix not a single head of cattle was to be seen; in Belgium every farm had its cows. In Belgium the mounted gendarmerie--the "green devils" whose infamous conduct in the Roubaix district I have described--were unknown. Their place was filled by military police, who, by comparison with the gendarmes, were gentleness itself.

I do not profess to know the state of affairs in parts of Belgium which I did not visit, but I do know that my narrative of the conditions of life that came under my personal inspection has come as a great surprise to many people who imagine the whole of Belgium is starving.

[Sidenote: Belgium better fed than occupied France.]

We in hungry Roubaix looked out on Belgium as the land of promise. The Flemish workers who came into the town from time to time from Belgium were well fed and prosperous looking, a great contrast to the French of Roubaix and Lille. The Belgian children that I saw were healthy and of good appearance, quite unlike the wasted little ones of France, with hollow blue rings round their eyes.

[Sidenote: Germany desires a state in Belgium.]

The people of Roubaix, knowing these facts, are convinced that the Germans are endeavoring to lay the foundations of a vassal State in Belgium. Foiled in their attempts to capture Calais, the Germans believe that Zeebrugge and Ostend are capable of development as harbors for aggressive action against England. The French do not doubt that the enemy will make a desperate struggle before giving up Antwerp.

The picture I have presented of Belgium as I saw it is, of course, vastly different from the outraged Belgium of the first stage of the war.

[Sidenote: The people not to be seduced.]

Lest there should arise any misunderstanding, I complete the picture by stating my conviction, based on intimate talks with Belgian men and women, that the population as a whole are keeping a firm upper lip, and that attempts by the Germans to seduce them from their allegiance by blandishment and bribery will fail as surely as the efforts of frightfulness.

Mr. Whitaker's account of his escape into Holland closes thus:

[Sidenote: Nearing Holland.]

When we drew near to the wires, just before midnight, we lay on the ground and wriggled along until we were within fifty yards of Holland. There we lay for what seemed to be an interminable time. We saw patrols passing. An officer came along and inspected the sentries. Everything was oppressively quiet.

[Sidenote: Through the electrified barbed wire.]

Each sentry moved to and fro over a distance of a couple of hundred yards. Opposite the place where we lay two of them met. Choosing his opportunity, one of my comrades, who had provided himself with rubber gloves some weeks before for this critical moment, rushed forward to the spot where the two sentries had just met. Scrambling through barbed wire and over an unelectrified wire, he grasped the electrified wires and wriggled between them. We came close on his heels. He held the deadly electrified wires apart with lengths of thick plate glass with which he had come provided while first my other companions and then I crawled through. Before the sentries returned we had run some hundreds of yards into No Man's Land between the electrified wires and the real Dutch frontier.

[Sidenote: Arrival at Rotterdam.]

Only one danger remained. We had no certainty that the Dutch frontier guards would not hand us back to the Germans. We took no risks, though it meant wading through a stream waist deep. Our troubles were now practically over. By rapid stages we proceeded to Rotterdam.

I was without money. My watch I had given to the Belgian villager in whose cottage I had found refuge. My clothes were shabby from frequent soakings and hard wear. I had shaved only once in Belgium, and a stubby growth of beard did not improve my general appearance.

[Sidenote: Sent on to London.]

At Rotterdam I reported myself to the British Consul. I was treated with the utmost kindness. My expenses during the next four or five days, while I waited for a boat, were paid and I was given my fare to Hull. There I was searched by two military police and questioned closely by an examining board. My papers were taken and I was told to go to London and apply for them at the Home Office. As I was again practically without means I was given permission to go to my home in Bradford before proceeding to London.

* * * * *

In cooperation with the British forces, a Russian army took part in movements against Bagdad and Turkish cities in Armenia and Persia. These military movements were marked by varying success on the part of the Russian and Turkish forces. Certain phases of this campaign are described in the following chapter.

THE ANGLO-RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN IN TURKEY

JAMES B. MACDONALD

Copyright, American Review of Reviews, April, 1916.

[Sidenote: Mesopotamia important to Great Britain.]

It is perhaps not generally realized how important the future of Mesopotamia is to the British, or why they originally sent an expedition there which has since developed into a more ambitious campaign. Ever since the Napoleonic period British influence and interests have been supreme from Bagdad to the Persian Gulf, and this was the one quarter of the globe where they successfully held off the German trader with his political backing.

[Sidenote: Great Britain's war with Persia.]

[Sidenote: British steamer on the Tigris.]

It will be recalled that early in Queen Victoria's reign Great Britain engaged in a war with Persia, and landed troops at Bushire in assertion of their rights. Ever since they have policed the Persian Gulf, put down piracy, slave and gun-running, and lighted the places dangerous to navigation. These interests having been entrusted to the Government of India, news affecting them seldom finds its way into Western papers. Previous to the war a line of British steamers plied regularly up the River Tigris to Bagdad, the center of the caravan trade with Persia. The foreign trade of this town alone in 1912 amounted to $19,000,000, and it was nearly all in the hands of merchants in Great Britain or India. Germany exported $500,000 worth of goods there annually. Basra, farther down the river, exports annually about 75,000 tons of dates, valued at $2,900,000. It also does a large export trade in wheat.

[Sidenote: An irrigation scheme.]

[Sidenote: The Persian oil fields controlled by Great Britain.]

[Sidenote: Native tribes subsidized.]

A large irrigation scheme was partly completed before the war, near the ancient town of Babylon, under the direction of a famous Anglo-Indian engineer, Sir William Willcocks. When finished it was to cost $105,000,000, and was expected to reclaim some 2,800,000 acres of land of great productibility. It will, therefore, be seen that Britain had some considerable stake in the country. In addition to this, the British Government, shortly before the war, invested $10,000,000 in acquiring control of the Anglo-Persian oil fields, which is the principal source of supply for oil fuel for their navy. By this means they avoided the risk of great American corporations cornering the supply of oil fuel and holding up their navy. John Bull upon occasion shows some gleamings of shrewdness. This deal is on a par with their purchase of sufficient shares to control the Suez Canal. The Anglo-Persian oil fields are situated across the border in Persia, and the oil is led in pipes down the Karam River valley, a tributary of the combined Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The native tribes in the neighborhood were subsidized to protect the pipe-line, or, rather, to leave it alone.

[Sidenote: Russia and Great Britain in Persia.]

[Sidenote: German railways must end at Bagdad.]

During recent years Persia has fallen into decay. Politically she is more sick than "the sick man of the East." The people have a religion of their own and worship the sun, although quite a number of Moslems have settled in their midst. Being cognizant of German designs to create a great Eastern empire in Mesopotamia and Persia, which would threaten India, Egypt, and the Russian East, Britain and Russia came together and formed a kind of Monroe Doctrine of their own. They said, in effect, northern Persia shall be Russia's sphere of influence, and southern Persia shall be Britain's sphere of influence. They both recognized that a great military power, like Germany, permanently established at Bagdad, with aggressive tendencies, would imperil their Eastern dominions, and both were prepared to make it a _casus belli_--Britain, further, a few years ago informed Germany that the area from Bagdad to the head of the Gulf was her "Garden of Eden," and any attempt to carry German railways south of Bagdad would bring on war. The Emperor William apparently did not mind this opposition by Britain and Russia to his Oriental ambition, provided he could find a passage through the Balkans.

[Sidenote: Persian gendarmes officered by Swedes.]

[Sidenote: Fairy-tales of Turkish conquest.]

At the time Britain and Russia came to an agreement regarding Persia they were not on so good a footing with each other as they are to-day. In order that neither should get an advantage over the other, it was decided that the Persian gendarmes--about 6,000 in number--should be officered by neutrals, and, unfortunately as it turned out for the Allies, they mutually chose Swedes. On the outbreak of war neither Britain nor Russia desired that Persia should be brought into it. The German ambassador in Persia, however, had other views, and suborned Swedish officers in command of the Persian gendarmes. Partly by this means, and partly by Turkish agents, a rebellion was brought about within the Russian sphere. Religion had nothing to do with the trouble in Persia. Turkish forces entered Persian Kurdistan and announced that they were on their way to conquer India and the Russian East, while their compatriots would overrun Egypt. These were the fairy-tales with which the Germans had originally enticed the Turks into the war. The Turks were willing to believe them, and apparently did believe them. The responsible Germans had no such illusions, but hoped to attain their ends by causing internal disturbances within India and Egypt. These German canards, put about in war time, have been adopted by some writers in this country as the foundation from which to write contemporary history. It may interest them to know that India possesses the strongest natural frontiers in the world.

[Sidenote: Strategy depends on geography.]

Strategy nowadays is very largely a matter of geography. Modern armies are circumscribed in their movements by the available means of transportation, whether these be by railroad, river, or roadway, and this means geography applied in giving direction to troop movements.

[Sidenote: Geographies of the war area.]

Before entering into a review of the combined Anglo-Russian campaign a preliminary survey of the strategical geography of the war area will make the position more clear.

[Sidenote: Constantinople once the world clearing-house.]

[Sidenote: Still the easiest route.]

In ancient times the only practical way by road and ferry from Europe to Asia or Africa was by way of the Balkan valleys and across the Bosphorus or Dardanelles. Hence arose the importance of the ferryhouse--Constantinople. That city in those days was the center of the known world and the clearing-house for the merchandise of Asia, Africa, and Europe. From Scutari, on the opposite shore, the overland route meandered across Asia Minor to Aleppo in Syria. Here the sign-post to India pointed down the Euphrates Valley, by way of Bagdad, while that to Egypt and Arabia followed the Levant or eastern shore of the Mediterranean. Between each fork lay the Syrian desert. A glance at the map shows the reason why in those days this was the only practical route, as to-day it is the easiest. The wall of the Ural Mountains, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasian Mountains, and the Black Sea shut out direct communication from Europe to Asia, or _vice versa_, except by the Constantinople ferry or a sea voyage.

[Sidenote: Another practical route.]

[Sidenote: The road for invasion of Egypt or India.]

[Sidenote: The Taurus range is the natural frontier of Egypt.]

In Asia Minor progress was further barred by the watershed of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers to the south, and the Caucasian Mountains to the east. A practical way was found at the lower elevations of the Taurus and Amanus mountains--two parallel spurs which strike the sea at the Gulf of Alexandretta. This narrow neck of the bottle, as it were, is of enormous military importance alike to the Turks and to the British. Through it must pass any army of invasion by land from Europe or Asia Minor to Egypt or India; and, conversely, through it must pass any invading army from Mesopotamia into Asia Minor. If the British should conquer Mesopotamia and should intend to hold it--as they undoubtedly would--they will have no strategical frontiers until they secure the watershed of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and the Taurus passage. If they secure the latter, Syria, Palestine, and Arabia will fall to them like apples off a tree. It would then be no longer necessary to defend the Suez Canal. The natural frontier of Egypt is the Taurus mountain range. Asia Minor is the real Turkey; the other portions of the empire--Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, Arabia, and Turkey in Europe--are only appendages. The eastern door into Asia Minor is Erzerum, and the southern door is the Taurus passage. Turkey can only part with these at the cost of her life. Russia has already captured Erzerum, and the British possess the Island of Cyprus, which commands the head of the Gulf of Alexandretta--twenty miles from the Taurus passage. That is, broadly, the situation.

[Sidenote: Aleppo is the starting point of caravan routes.]