Golden Lads Part 4

"The Germans are very disappointed that a certain number of Belgians have been able to escape, either to enlist in the Belgian army or to live abroad. Of course, the more Belgians are in their hands, the more pressure they can exert. They are now slandering the Belgians who have left their country--all the 'rich' people who are 'feasting' abroad while their countrymen are starving.

"The fewer Belgians there are in German hands, the better it is. The Belgians whose ability is the most useful, are considered useful by the Germans for the latter's sake. Must it not be a terrible source of anxiety for these Belgians to think that all the work they manage to do is directly or indirectly done for Germany? It is not astonis.h.i.+ng that she wants to restore 'business, as usual' in Belgium, and that in many cases she has tried to force the Belgian workers to earn for her. Let me simply refer to the protest recently published by the Belgian Legation. But for the American Commission for Relief, the Belgians would have had to choose between starvation and work--work for Germany--starvation or treason. Nothing shows better the greatness and moment of the American work. Without the material and moral presence of the United States, Belgium would have simply been turned into a nation of slaves--starvation or treason.

"If I were in Belgium, I could say nothing; I would have to choose between silence and prison, or silence and death. Remember Edith Cavell.

An enthusiastic, courageous man is running as many risks in Belgium now, as he would have in the sixteenth century under the Spanish domination.

The hundred eyes of the Spanish Inquisition were then continually prying into everything--bodies and souls; one felt them even while one was sleeping. The German Secret Service is not less pitiless and it is more efficient.

"The process of slander and lie carried on by the Germans to 'flatten'

Belgium is, to my judgment, the worst of their war practices. It is very efficient indeed. But, however efficient it may be, it will be unsuccessful as to its main purpose. The Germans will not be able to bow Belgian heads. As long as the Belgians do not admit that they have been conquered, they are not conquered, and in the meanwhile the Germans are merely aggravating their infamy. It was an easy thing to over-run the unprepared Belgian soil--but the Belgian spirit is unconquerable.

"Belgium may slumber, but die--never."

When men act as part of an implacable machine, they act apart from their humanity. They commit unbelievable horrors, because the thing that moves them is raw force, untouched by fine purpose and the elements of mercy.

When I think of Germans, man by man, as they lay wounded, waiting for us to bring them in and care for them as faithfully as for our own, I know that they have become human in their defeat. We are their friends as we break them. In spite of their treachery and cruelty and cold hatred, we shall save them yet. Cleared of their evil dream and restored to our common humanity, they will have a more profound sorrow growing out of this war than any other people, for Belgium and France only suffered these things, but the great German race committed them.

MY EXPERIENCE WITH BAEDEKER

When I went to Belgium, friends said to me, "You must take 'Baedeker's Belgium' with you; it is the best thing on the country." So I did. I used it as I went around. The author doesn't give much about himself, and that is a good feature in any book, but I gathered he was a German, a widely traveled man, and he seems to have spent much time in Belgium, for I found intimate records of the smallest things. I used his guide for five months over there. I must say right here I was disappointed in it. And that isn't just the word, either. I was annoyed by it. It gave all the effect of accuracy, and then when I got there it wasn't so. He kept speaking of buildings as "beautiful," "one of the loveliest unspoiled pieces of thirteenth century architecture in Europe," and when I took a lot of trouble and visited the building, I found it half down, or a b.u.t.t-end, or sometimes ashes. I couldn't make his book tally up.

It doesn't agree with the landscape and the look of things. He will take a perfectly good detail and stick it in where it doesn't belong, and leave it there. And he does it all in a painstaking way and with evident sincerity.

His volume had been so popular back in his own country that it had brought a lot of Germans into Belgium. I saw them everywhere. They were doing the same thing I was doing, checking up what they saw with the map and text and things. Some of them looked puzzled and angry, as they went around. I feel sure they will go home and give Baedeker a warm time, when they tell him they didn't find things as he had represented.

For one thing, he makes out Belgium a lively country, full of busy, contented people, innocent peasants, and st.u.r.dy workmen and that sort of thing. Why, it's the saddest place in the world. The people are not cheery at all. They are depressed. It's the last place I should think of for a holiday, now that I have seen it. And that's the way it goes, all through his work. Things are the opposite of what he says with so much meticulous care. He would speak of "gay cafe life" in a place that looked as if an earthquake had hit it, and where the only people were some cripples and a few half-starved old folks. If he finds that sort of thing gay as he travels around, he is an easy man to please. It was so wherever I went. It isn't as if he were wrong at some one detail. He is wrong all over the place, all over Belgium. It's all different from the way he says it is. I know his fellow-countrymen who are there now will bear me out in this.

Let me show one place. I took his book with me and used it on Nieuport.

That's a perfectly fair test, because Nieuport is like a couple of hundred other towns.

"Nieuport," says Herr Baedeker, "a small and quiet place on the Yser."

It is one of the noisiest places I have ever been in. There was a day and a half in May when sh.e.l.ls dropped into the streets and houses, every minute. Every day at least a few screaming three-inch sh.e.l.ls fall on the village. Aeroplanes buzz overhead, shrapnel pings in the sky. Rifle bullets sing like excited telegraph wires. If Baedeker found Nieuport a quiet place, he was brought up in a boiler factory.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Baedeker, the distinguished German writer, states that this Fifteenth Century Gothic church in Nieuport has "a modern timber roof." We looked for it.]

His very next phrase puzzled me--"with 3500 inhabitants," he says.

And I didn't see one. There were dead people in the ruins of the houses.

The soldiers used to unearth them from time to time. I remember that the poet speaks of "the poor inhabitant below," when he is writing of a body in a grave. It must be in that sense that Baedeker specifies those 3500 inhabitants. But he shouldn't do that kind of imaginative touch. It isn't in his line. And it might mislead people.

Think of a stranger getting into Nieuport after dark on a wet night, with his mind all set on the three hotels Baedeker gives him a choice of.

"All unpretending," he says.

Just the wrong word. Why, those hotels are brick dust. They're flat on the ground. There isn't a room left. He means "demolished." He doesn't use our language easily. I can see that. It is true they are unpretending, but that isn't the first word you would use about them, not if you were fluent.

Then he gives a detail that is unnecessary. He says you can sleep or eat there for a "franc and a half." That exact.i.tude is out of place. It is labored. I ask you what a traveler would make of the "1 fr. _pour diner_," when he came on that rubbish heap which is the Hotel of Hope--"Hotel de l'Esperance." That is like Baedeker, all through his volume. He will give a detail, like the precise cost of this dinner, when there isn't any food in the neighborhood. It wouldn't be so bad if he'd sketch things in general terms. That I could forgive. But it is too much when he makes a word-picture of a Flemish table d'hote for a franc and a half in a section of country where even the cats are starving.

His next statement is plain twisted. "Nieuport is noted for its obstinate resistance to the French."

I saw French soldiers there every day. They were defending the place.

His way of putting it stands the facts on their head.

"And (is noted) for the 'Battle of the Dunes' in 1600."

That is where the printer falls down. I was there during the Battle of the Dunes. The nine is upside down in the date as given.

I wouldn't object so much if he were careless with facts that were harmless, like his hotels and his dinner and his dates. But when he gives bad advice that would lead people into trouble, I think he ought to be jacked up. Listen to this:

"We may turn to the left to inspect the locks on the ca.n.a.ls to Ostend."

Baedeker's proposal here means sure death to the reader who tries it.

That section is lined with machine guns. If a man began turning and inspecting, he would be shot. Baedeker's statement is too casual. It sounds like a suggestion for a leisurely walk. It isn't a sufficient warning against doing something which shortens life. The word "inspect"

is unfortunate. It gives the reader the idea he is invited to nose around those locks, when he had really better quiet down and keep away.

The sentries don't want him there. I should have written that sentence differently. His kind of unconsidered advice leads to a lot of sadness.

"The Rue Longue contains a few quaint old houses."

It doesn't contain any houses at all. There are some heaps of scorched rubble. "Quaint" is word painting.

"On the south side of this square rises the dignified Cloth Hall."

There is nothing dignified about a shattered, burned, tottering old building. Why will he use these literary words?

"With a lately restored belfry."

It seems as if this writer couldn't help saying the wrong thing. A Zouave gave us a piece of bronze from the big bell. It wasn't restored at all. It was on the ground, broken.

"The church has a modern timber roof."

There he goes again--the exact opposite of what even a child could see were the facts. And yet in his methodical, earnest way, he has tried to get these things right. That church, for instance, has no roof at all.

It has a few pillars standing. It looks like a skeleton. I have a good photograph of it, which the reader can see on page 69. If Baedeker would stand under that "modern timber roof" in a rainstorm, he wouldn't think so much of it.

"The Hotel de Ville contains a small collection of paintings."

I don't like to keep picking on what he says, but this sentence is irritating. There aren't any paintings there, because things are scattered. You can see torn bits strewed around on the floor of the place, but nothing like a collection.

I could go on like that, and take him up on a lot more details. But it sounds as if I were criticising. And I don't mean it that way, because I believe the man is doing his best. But I do think he ought to get out another edition of his book, and set these points straight.

He puts a little poem on his t.i.tle page:

Go, little book, G.o.d send thee good pa.s.sage, And specially let this be thy prayer Unto them all that thee will read or hear, Where thou art wrong, after their help to call, Thee to correct in any part or all.

That sounds fair enough. So I am going to send him these notes. But it isn't in "parts" he is "wrong." There is a big mistake somewhere.