Through the Iron Bars | Page 6

be wise to do so.
* * * * *
Such narrow-minded tyranny always defeats its own objects.
Burgomaster Max's proud answer to General von Luttwitz's "advice" to

remove the flags became the password of the patriots. Every Bruxellois
henceforth "waited for the hour of reparation." A great number of
women went to prison rather than remove the emblems of Belgium
which they wore. Stories passed from lip to lip. Their accuracy I would
not guarantee, but they belong to the epic of the war and are true to the
spirit of the people. A young lady, who was jeered at by a German
officer because she was wearing King Albert's portrait, is said to have
answered his "Lackland" with, "I would rather have a King who has
lost his country than an Emperor who has lost his honour." Another
lady, sitting in a tram-car opposite a German officer, was ordered by
him to remove her tricolour rosette. She refused to do so, and, as he
threatened her, defied him to do it himself. The Boche seized the
rosette and pulled .. and pulled .. and pulled. The lady had concealed
twenty yards of ribbon in her corsage.
When the tricolour was forbidden altogether, it was replaced by the
ivyleaf, ivy being the emblem of faithfulness; later, the ivyleaf was
followed by a green ribbon, green being the colour of hope. The
Brabançonne being excluded from the street and from the school took
refuge in the Churches, where it is played and often sung by the
congregation at the end of the service. There are many ways of getting
round the law. The Belgians were forbidden to celebrate in any
ordinary way the anniversary of their independence. Thanks to a sort of
tacit arrangement they succeeded in marking the occasion in spite of all
regulations. On July 21st, 1915, the Bruxellois kept the shutters of their
houses and shops closed and went out in the streets dressed in their best
clothes, most of them in mourning. The next year, as the closing of
shops was this time foreseen by the administration, they remained open.
But a great number of tradespeople managed ingeniously to display the
national colours in their windows--by the juxtaposition, for instance, of
yellow lemons, red tomatoes and black grapes. Others emptied their
windows altogether.
These jokes may seem childish, at first sight, but when we think that
those who dared perform them paid for it with several months'
imprisonment or several thousand marks, and paid cheerily, we
understand that there is more in them than a schoolboy's pranks. It

seems as if the Belgian spirit would break if it ceased to be able to react.
One of the shop-managers who was most heavily fined on the occasion
of our last "Independence Day" declared that he had not lost his money:
"It is rather expensive, but it is worth it."
* * * * *
If patriotism has become a religion in Belgium, this religion has found
a priest whose authority is recognised by the last unbeliever. If every
church has become the "Temple de la Patrie," if the Brabançonne
resounds under the Gothic arches of every nave, Cardinal Mercier has
become the good shepherd who has taken charge of the flock during the
King's absence. The great Brotherhood, for which so many Christian
souls are yearning, in which there are no more classes, parties, and
sects, seems well nigh achieved beyond the electrified barbed wire of
the Belgian frontier. Are not all Belgians threatened with the same
danger, are they not close-knit by the same hope, the same love, the
same hatred?
When the bells rang from the towers of Brussels Cathedral on July 21st
last, when, in his red robes, Cardinal Mercier blessed the people
assembled to celebrate the day of Belgium's Independence, it seemed
that the soul of the martyred nation hovered in the Church. After the
national anthem, people lifted their eyes towards the great crucifix in
the choir, and could no longer distinguish, through their tears, the
image of the Crucified from that of their bleeding country.

III.
THE POISONED WELLS.
We must never forget, when we speak of the moral resistance of the
Belgian people, that they have been completely isolated from their
friends abroad for more than two years and that meanwhile they have
been exposed to all the systematic and skilful manoeuvres of German
propaganda. Not only are they without news from abroad, but all the

news they receive is calculated to spread discouragement and distrust.
How true lovers could resist a long separation and the most wicked
calumnies without losing faith in one another has been the theme of
many a story. From the story-writer's point of view, the true narrative
of the German occupation of Belgium is much more romantic