Through the Iron Bars | Page 8

on whenever the
opportunity arises, was specially violent at the beginning, when the
Germans had not yet given up all hope of detaching King Albert from
the Alliance (August-September, 1914). It was perhaps the most
dangerous line of attack because it did not imply any breach of
patriotism. On the contrary it suggested that Belgium had been duped
by the Allies, and especially by England, who had never meant to come
to her help and who had used her as a catspaw, leaving her to bear all
the brunt of the German assault in an unequal and heroic struggle. It
was accompanied by a constant flow of war news exaggerating the
German successes and suggesting that, even if they ever had the
intention of delivering Belgium, the Allies would no longer be in a
position to do so.
According to the first war-news poster issued in Brussels, a few days
after the enemy had entered the town, the French official papers had
declared that "The French armies, being thrown on the defensive,
would not be able to help Belgium in an offensive movement." I need
not recall how, his name having been used at Liège to bolster up this
false report, M. Max, the burgomaster of Brussels, found an
opportunity of contradicting it publicly and, at the same time, of
discrediting all censored news.
The effect was amazing. Henceforth the official posters were not only
regularly regarded as a tissue of lies, but definitely ridiculed. The

people either ignored them or paid them an exaggerated attention. In
some popular quarters, urchins climbed on ladders to read them aloud
to a jeering crowd. The influence of M. Max's attitude was such that,
eighteen months later, several people coming from the capital declared
that, as far as war news was concerned, Brussels was far more
optimistic than London or Paris, every check received by the Allied
armies being systematically ignored and every success exaggerated.
When one reads through the series of German "_Communications_"
pasted on the walls of the capital during the first year of the occupation,
one wonders how they did not succeed in discouraging the population.
For, in spite of some extraordinary blunders--such as the announcement
that a German squadron had captured fifteen English fishing boats
(September 8th, 1914), that the Serbs had taken Semlin because they
had nothing more to eat in Serbia (September 13th, 1914), or that the
British army was so badly equipped that the soldiers lacked boot-laces
and writing paper (October 6th, 1914)--the author of these
proclamations succeeded so skilfully in mixing truth and untruth and in
drawing the attention of the public away from any reverse suffered by
the Central Empires, that the effect of the campaign might have been
most demoralizing.
After this first reverse, the Germans only attacked the Allies in order to
throw on their shoulders the responsibility for the woes which they
themselves were inflicting on their victims. When some English
aeroplanes visited Brussels, on September 26th, 1915, a few people
were killed and many more wounded. The German press declared
immediately that this was due to the want of skill of the airmen, who
dropped the bombs indiscriminately over the town. We possess now
material proof that the people were killed, not by bombs dropped from
the air, but by fragments of shells fired from guns. This can only be
explained in one way. The German gunners must have timed their
shells so that they should not burst in the air, but only when falling on
the ground. This method of propaganda may cost a few lives, but it is
certainly clever. It might well be calculated to stir indignation in the
hearts of the people against the Allies and at the same time to serve as a
warning to enemy headquarters to the effect: "Whenever you send your

aeroplanes over Belgian towns, we are going to make the population
pay for it."
The same kind of argument is used at the present moment with regard
to the wholesale deportations which are going on in Belgium. To justify
his slave-raids, Governor von Bissing denounces England's blockade. It
is the economic policy of England--not German requisitions--which has
ruined Belgium and caused unemployment: "If there are any objections
to be made about this state of affairs you must address them to England,
who, through her policy of isolation, has rendered the coercive
measures necessary." [1] But the argument is used more for the sake of
discussion than in the real hope of convincing the public. General von
Bissing can have very few illusions left as to the state of mind of the
Belgian population. He knows that every Belgian worker, would
answer, with the members of the Commission Syndicale: "All the
Allies have agreed to let some raw material necessary to our industry
enter