CHAPTER V FRANCS-TIREURS?
 
I THINK that there is no better occasion to deal with the question whether there was a franc-tireur-guerilla in Belgium than after the chapter on the destruction of Visé.
My opinion on the matter is still the same as when I first wrote about it to De Tijd, and in Vrij Belgi?; and from my own personal knowledge and after mixing with the people I consider the allegation that the Belgians acted as francs-tireurs an absolute lie.
Some uphold the accusation on the ground of expressions in Belgian newspapers, collected in a German pamphlet. In my opinion these quotations have not the slightest value. Everyone will understand this who thinks of the excitement of journalists, whose country was suddenly and quite unexpectedly involved in a terrible war, and who felt now that as journalists they had to perform a great, patriotic duty. In their nervous, over-excited condition they sat at their desk and listened to the gossip of refugees about civilians taking part in the struggle. In their imagination they saw hordes of barbarians overrun their native soil, saw man and man, woman88 and woman, shoulder to shoulder, resisting the invader without regard for their own life. The thoughts of such journalists, whose very own country had been at war now for a few days, were not on severe logical lines; they found a certain beauty in that picture, and I can quite understand how some came to believe in it as a reality, and gloried in it.
That is not evidence however, for how did they get the information? From my own experience I make bold to say with the greatest confidence that these reports came from German sources only, whereas there was not any ground for them.
I have witnessed all the people during the very earliest days of the war. I came to Liège, passing between the forts, as described already. I was in Lixhe when the pontoon bridge was wrecked repeatedly by Fort Pontisse; I stayed at Visé three times before the destruction began, and I was there when the charming townlet was wrecked by fire; and in Louvain I have been dragged from my bed by six soldiers and arrested, when the whole town was still ablaze.
Very well, I have:
1. Never seen anything of a franc-tireur-guerilla.
2. Never seen anyone who was arrested as a franc-tireur.
3. Never heard any German soldier, of whatever rank, assert that he himself had witnessed any action by a franc-tireur, although I questioned such soldiers times without number. They always mentioned others, who had left days ago, and were said to have gone through the miserable experience!
89 4. Never heard the name of any franc-tireur in answer to my questions.
But they were always German officers and no others who talked about francs-tireurs, and at Visé, Liège, Dinant, Bilsen, and particularly at Louvain, they constantly pressed me and tried to make me promise that I should write to De Tijd about francs-tireurs and justify the devastations. These stories emanated from the officers and permeated the rank and file; and the men grew fearfully angry with the Belgians, whom they cursed and abused. It also made the soldiers terribly afraid of francs-tireurs, and I noticed many a time that some loud sound from a falling wall, for example, made a whole troop of soldiers jump up, lay hold of their rifles, and hide themselves in an absolute "blue funk." The mere noise made them curse and rage and talk of nothing but burning houses.
In the end these stories of the soldiers convinced even the inhabitants that there had been francs-tireurs, but never in the place where they lived, always somewhere else. They could not believe that the Germans could be so cruel and wreck so much property if nothing at all had happened; and when at length the time came that they themselves were obliged to fly, many of them believed that their compatriots who elsewhere acted as francs-tireurs were to blame for all the dire calamities. But if they had had my opportunity to go "elsewhere" and gather information there, they would have been convinced of the untruth, and probably would have heard the name of their own village as90 the scene of the occurrence. That was how rumours and reports got about.
Many soldiers, probably most of them, were undoubtedly of good faith, and believed what they related; but the damnable notion had been put into their heads by their superiors. That is why I do not consider it impossible that some places were wrecked on account of alleged acts by francs-tireurs.
I have explained already in the chapter "Round about Liège" that I myself was duped occasionally, for example, by the story of the three hundred civilians who had been shot. To my mind these violent acts at the beginning of the war were part and parcel of the system of frightfulness, by which the Germans tried to scare the population and indirectly the hostile armies, at the same time rousing their own soldiers to anger and fury.
That mad fury was also intensified considerably by the accusations about gruesome mutilations committed on German soldiers by Belgians, who were said to have cut off the noses, ears, genitals, and so on of their enemies. These rumours were so persistent that in the end it was generally believed in neutral countries that these things had happened frequently.
No little astonishment was therefore created by an interview which I published with Dr. van der Goot of The Hague, who did so much excellent work in the Red Cross Hospital at Maastricht. He also had come to believe all these stories, and as everybody always mentioned a large hospital in Aix-la-Chapelle, which was said to be full of similarly mutilated soldiers, Dr. van der Goot went to that91 town to see for himself. The chief medical officer of that hospital in a conversation stated that not one single case of that sort had been treated in his institution nor in any of the other local hospitals where he was a visiting physician. At a meeting of the medical circle just lately held he had not heard one word, nor had any one colleague, about the treatment of similar cases.
In Louvain I was myself arrested, because a more than half-drunk soldier had accused me of spying and arson! There too I had to listen to all sorts of abuse because I was a franc-tireur. And in spite of all this they tried to extract a promise from me to write against the francs-tireurs!
The history of the destruction of Visé affords also interesting support to my opinion, as previously expressed, that the violent actions of the Germans took place according to a fully thought-out design.
During the early days of the war the papers published a report, of German origin, that Visé had been destroyed because francs-tireurs had appeared. I was therefore not a little amazed when, arriving there on August 8th, I found the townlet entirely undamaged, and even the German military admitted that they had not heard a word about francs-tireurs.
But the inhabitants were treated even then in a most vexatious manner, and on August 14th (the destruction came about on the 16th) I wrote to De Tijd (No. 20457):—
"Visé is under a real reign of terror. The day before yesterday the town-crier walked the streets with his bell, and announced that within twenty-four hours everyone had to deliver his bicycle at the bridge. Anyone in whose house92 a bicycle should be found would be shot and his house set on fire. Yesterday morning the Germans announced once more that all arms, including those that were old or damaged or taken to pieces, should be handed in at the town-hall within an hour. If any arms should be found anywhere after that, they would shoot the inhabitants and burn down the town. Eatables and drinkables were requisitioned continuously under threats of firing the town, and the inhabitants are afraid of nothing so much as of the possibility that something may be required some day or other that cannot be produced."
Even before that, on August 11th I sent a communication, by post or cable (De Tijd, No. 20353), in which the following is found:—
"In and round about Visé people sleep in their cellars, as they are threatened frequently that the town will be set on fire."
Anyone who, like myself, has been able to see in what frame of mind the people were during the first days of the German occupation, cannot believe it possible that they would even think of taking up arms. They lived in an unending terror, tried to forestall the invader's demands, and, if anything was requisitioned, they searched each other's houses to see whether anything was kept back and all the demanded bottles of gin or claret were forthcoming. There was not one who did not keep his door open as widely as possible to prove his complete submissiveness, and to let the Germans enter his house at any time to check what was to be found there. Every moment I saw men or women run into the street offering cigars to the soldiers from open boxes, smiling nervously and desperately, trying to behave as unconcernedly as possible. During those early93 days payment for refreshments was accepted hardly anywhere, and people often refused to accept money from me, because they mistook me for a German.
Men and young women in the prime of life sat whole days in a chair, or lay abed, because in the most literal sense of the word they were unable to stand on their feet for fear and terror, caused by the incessant menaces.
And during these first days of the war I had not met a single person who was able to settle down quietly in the existing circumstances, not a single person in whom anger and fury subdued fear and terror.
Is it thinkable that persons in that frame of mind would take up arms and invite the enemy's revenge upon themselves and those near and dear to them, a revenge of which they were so mortally afraid?
And supposing for a moment that the allegations made by the Germans were true, that there had been shooting at Visé for example, then one might perhaps consider the revenge justifiable, but should also expect that they would punish with a heavy heart, conscious that they were inflicting a necessary evil.
Of a heavy heart, however, there was not a trace. In the previous chapter I described how beastly they behaved during the destruction of Visé; how the soldiers drank immoderate quantities of alcohol, and then jeered at the wretched refugees; how they indulged in unmitigated vandalism, and wrecked by hand things of which they knew that by and by would be destroyed by fire.
Children and old people perished in consequence94 of the cruel heartlessness of the Germans, and in St. Hadelin College they robbed their own wounded of medical help and surgical appliances.
This happened not only at Visé, but also at other places which I visited, more especially at Louvain. And those who read the following chapters carefully will find sufficient support for my opinion, that Belgium is innocent of the base charges and allegations uttered by Germany, which country soiled its conscience still worse, first by plunging the little kingdom into the direst misery, and then by accusing it falsely of crimes which it never committed.