Слике страница
PDF
ePub

flag of the commission and carrying passes from the German Ambassadors at the neutral capitals. The Captains of the commission's ships were pledged not to engage in belligerent practices, and the commission not to send anything but food and clothing for the Belgian population.

When Great Britain declared foodstuffs contraband, the commission's ships were exempted from the Order in Council. It was provided that they should be specially marked with the letters "C. R. B." At the beginning of the submarine warfare around the British Isles in February, 1915, the German Government agreed that the commission's steamers should go through the war zone immune from attack.

On President Wilson's announcement of the diplomatic break, the commission ordered all its ships in America, Argentina, India, and Europe to remain in port till further notice. But fifteen ships were either in or approaching the war zone, and could not be reached by wireless. Two of them were sunk. It was said that the German Government would no longer respect the commission's flag unless the ships took a course entirely to the north of the newly established war zone on their way to Holland. The German Government gave assurances that it had no intention of interfering with the work of feeding the civil populations of Belgium and Northern France.

Despite the diplomatic break, the commission decided at first not to withdraw its representatives from Belgium, but on Feb. 12, after a German order had been issued for all Americans to withdraw from the occupied territories, leaving in Brussels only a few of their representatives, headed by Brand Whitlock, the American Minister to Belgium, the commission notified the German authorities that the Americans would cease to participate in the relief work in Belgium and Northern France. However, after a conference on Feb. 15 between the German Civil Governor of Brussels, the American and Spanish Ministers, and representatives of the commission and the Belgian National Committee, permission was given by the German authori

ties for the commission to continue its work, and it was decided not to withdraw. The German action in ordering Americans to leave the occupied territories was so promptly reversed that the continuity of the work was not interrupted.

In regard to immunity from attack by submarines, it was announced on Feb. 24 that the sailing of the commission's ships had been resumed as the result of arrangements with the British and German Governments whereby a route between North American ports and Rotterdam had been agreed upon. Meanwhile, however, many of the commission's vessels had accumulated in British ports, and were held there. Concerning these Sir Maurice de Bunsen, British Under Secretary of Foreign Affairs, made the following statement on March 5:

In declaring the war zone, Germany explicitly canceled all her safe conducts, giving only a few hours for the relief ships then in United Kingdom ports to clear for Rotterdam. It was impossible to get them away in time. It was also impossible to communicate with the ships on the high seas, as they were not provided with wireless.

Since then the Germans have alleged that they accorded to these and to other neutral ships a further period of grace. Nobody ever heard of this until the Germans announced that the period had expired. All that the commission or the world knew was that the Germans had opened their submarine campaign by sinking two Belgian relief ships.

There has thus been a steady accumulation of relief ships in the United Kingdom ports. Their cargoes have been deteriorating, valuable anchorages have been taken up, and the whole of this tonnage, which urgently is required to take additional relief cargoes from American ports, has been held in suspense for a month.

The commission immediately opened negotiations with the Germans through the Spanish, Dutch, and Swiss Governments, and the Entente Governments strongly supported their representations. The only reply which the Germans vouchsafed regarding the ships in the ports of the United Kingdom is that they will reserve any question as to the giving of guarantees for such ships until they have received a detailed list of their names and of the reports where they now are. This request was received virtually simultaneously with the sinking of Dutch liners in the English Channel.

His Majesty's Government have replied that, in view of that occurrence, to give any such information to the Germans before the latter have guaranteed absolute immunity to all these ships, would be to lay them open

to attack and invite treachery. In view of the evident intention of Germany to hold up this tonnage for the longest possible period, and in view of the urgent need of these ships to take further cargoes to the starving populations in Belgium and Northern France, his Majesty's Government have agreed with the commission to discharge these cargoes in the United Kingdom and provide storage for them until the Germans either have given the necessary guarantees to relief ships from the United Kingdom ports passing Rotterdam or have shown even more clearly than at present that they do not intend to give such guarantees.

Meanwhile a regular supply of foodstuffs for Belgium and Northern France will go on in ships passing under German safe conducts from American ports to Rotterdam. The

position therefore is as follows: His Majesty's Government have respected and will respect property of the commission in these cargoes. All that they have done is to provide storage room for foodstuffs which the Germans are apparently anxious to hinder reaching Belgium and Northern France.

On the other hand, the Germans already twice have broken their safe conducts and destroyed property of the commission. By this act of faithlessness they have struck one blow at the work of relief. They now invite his Majesty's Government to assist them in destroying more relief ships by informing them where the ships are and consequently how they can best be attacked when the ships set sail. To satisfy the German demands would be to become accomplices in their crimes.

[ocr errors]

Secret Journalism in Belgium

Story of La Libre Belgique

66

A LIBRE BELGIQUE, the secret newspaper whose tenacity of life exasperates the German authorities in the occupied provinces of Belgium, recently celebrated the second anniversary of its birth. At the end of January, 1915, appeared the first number of this unique organ, which describes itself as regularly irregular," and which states under its title that its office is in an "automobile cellar." Naturally, this indomitable organ of patriotic propaganda, which circulates mysteriously in every Belgian town under the German yoke, celebrated the anniversary by coming out yet again and evading the frantic efforts of Baron von Bissing's police to suppress it.

La Libre Belgique (Free Belgium) is irrepressible. The Germans have arrested numerous persons suspected of being connected with it, but they have never succeeded in preventing or even retarding its publication. Neither the promise of a large reward for any one who will betray it, nor the threat of heavier punishments, nor yet the implacable attempt to hunt down all who carry or read the paper-nothing has been able to ruin the audacious enterprise. In its first issue of last December, when the forced deportation of civilians was in full swing, La Libre Belgique published on its front page an article depicting

[merged small][ocr errors]

Baron von Bissing, the Governor General, finds the little sheet in his mail every week, and he will probably be the only person after the war, says a writer in the Paris Temps, "to possess a complete file of this publication, which mocks the German Emperor in the midst of Prussian terrorism, and which, in spite of all the censors, calls a cat a cat, Bethmann Hollweg a liar, and William II. a knave."

The only result obtained by the oppressor is an extraordinary development of clandestine printing in the occupied districts. The success of La Libre Belgique has caused other journals to spring up, edited by no one knows who, printed no one knows where, circulated no one knows by what means. There exists in downtrodden Belgium a Weekly Review of the French Press which has passed its sixtieth number and which reproduces for Belgian readers the chief articles in the Paris newspapers and magazines;

there is Le Motus, a satirical sheet, full of a biting, something cruel, irony; there is Patrie! which competes with La Libre Belgique for there is competition even there and indulges in the perilous luxury of reproducing the most striking cartoons of Louis Raemaekers, notably the famous "En Route to Calais," which shows the corpses of German soldiers floating in the flood of the inundated region along the Yser.

How do these newspapers live? How can they get together their "copy"? How do they get their type set, or make the plates for their pictures, or procure the necessary paper, or recruit their salesmen, or deliver the printed copies to their subscribers? There is a series of complex problems, when one recalls that the German authorities have thousands of spies at their command, that every house is watched, and that a man cannot move from one town to another without a special permit from the "kommandatur." And yet all this is accomplished regularly; hundreds of patriotic persons risk prison and deportation every week to devote themselves to this task. It is their way of fighting the Germans on the ground where these pretend to be absolute masters.

Later, when everything can be told, the story of the adventures of clandestine newspapers in the occupied regions will constitute one of the most curious chapters in the history of the war. The Germans will be astonished at the simplicity of the means used to circumvent them. The Belgian, a protester by nature, with rare tenacity in anything he undertakes, at once bold in conception and prudent in execution, was admirably fitted for a struggle of this sort. The writer above quoted remarks that the Germans understand nothing of the Belgian temperament, and do not even suspect the rivalries and complicities which are always to be found alike in Flanders and in Wallonia, for the most incredible tasks

that involve circumventing the police. No letter can enter Belgium or leave it without passing under the eyes of the German censors, and yet at Brussels, at Antwerp, at Liége, the people know exactly what the Paris papers of four or five days ago contained. La Libre Belgique in June, 1916, reproduced in extenso a speech by M. Briand that had appeared in Le Temps on May 19. At no moment since the beginning of the German occupation have the leading French papers ceased to circulate in Belgium. There is a well-known system which consists in obtaining for two or three francs the regular reading of this or that journal for half an hour. Another form of "subscription" is more curious, and more expensive: every day one receives two or three mimeographed sheets summing up the news and reproducing the essential passages from the latest Paris and London papers. What sort of an organization handles this service? Nobody knows; the Belgians themselves do not know. They read and reread the sheets, fixing the details in the memory, then carefully burn them. When the Germans afterward wish to impose on them with a false version of events, they have the laugh on their oppressors, for even in the remotest and smallest towns the people know the truth.

"The rapidity with which the news circulates in the invaded regions," says a French writer, "has been one of the essential factors in maintaining the admirable morale of the Belgian people. The clandestine press, with its disconcerting phenomena, has kept the population in touch with the outer world and played an important rôle in the nation's passive resistance to its oppressors. These little leaves, printed no matter how, in the chance of the hour, have demonstrated the fallibility of Prussian terrorism, for they sum up for a whole people its passion of patriotism and its inflexible will not to die."

By Woislav M. Petrovitch

Former attaché of the Royal Serbian Legation at the Court of St. James's; author of "Serbia: Her People, History, and Aspirations."

T

HE defeat of the Sultan's forces by the Balkan allies in 1912-13 had been a tremendous blow to Austria-Hungary and especially to Germany, whose officers had reorganized and trained the Ottoman Army, and who, for the success of her schemes of expansion in Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, depended on her ascendency in Constantinople. The

utter débâcle of Bulgaria, inflicted upon her by the Serbians in the memorable battle of the Bregalnitsa, in July of 1913, the Greek occupation of Saloniki, and the rise in power and prestige of Serbia, the friend of Rus

sia and the apostle of

the Jugoslav, or Southern Slav, emancipation, constituted for the powers north of the Danube a still greater catastrophe. The high road to Saloniki, by the valleys of the Serbian rivers, Morava and the Var

Such was the position when, on June 28, 1914, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Hapsburg throne, and his consort were murdered in the streets of Serajevo, the capital of Bosnia. "There are many mysterious features about that tragedy. His death certainly did not serve any Southern Slav interests, for, however great and dangerous his ambi

WOISLAV M. PETROVITCH

dar, was definitely closed to Austria, and Germany was cut off from Turkey, whose army was to act in conjunction with the Teutonic hosts in the event of a European war.

Only prompt action could retrieve such a miscarrying of the Austro-German plans, and it is not surprising to hear that as early as the Summer of 1913 the Dual Monarchy was bent on declaring war on Serbia, and endeavored to secure the support of Italy. As this help was not forthcoming, action was deferred for the moment, and a huge army bill was promulgated in Germany to redress the balance of power and make ready for any eventuality.

tions, he is known to have been quite out of sympathy with the short-sighted policy of repression which had hitherto found favor in Vienna and in Pesth, where, for various reasons, he had many enemies in extremely influential quarters. The absence of all the most elementary precautions for his safety during the visit to Serajevo, though, according to the Austrians themselves, the whole of Bosnia was honeycombed with sedition, is an awkward fact which has not

[graphic]

hitherto been explained."*

On the morrow of the crime the Austro-Hungarian press started a violent campaign against Serbia, openly putting upon the Serbian Government the responsibility for the outrage. It availed nothing to point out that a country still bleeding from the wounds of two desperate wars, and whose most urgent need was a period of quiet and of internal consolidation, could not have chosen so unfavorable a moment to involve itself in new difficulties with a powerful neighbor; still less was considered the fact that the young miscreants

*Sir Valentine Chirol, "Serbia and the Serbs," Oxford, 1914.

were

Austrian

that subjects, and "Bosnia, Dalmatia, and Croatia are a seething pot which needs no stirring from the outside;* the Viennese press set itself deliberately to spread the idea that the misdeed had been organized in and by official Serbia. Although the Bosnian Serbs, who constitute the bulk of the population of that province, are always referred to in Austria by such names as die Bosniaken die Orthodoxen aus Bosnian," the assassins were referred to invariably as Serben," and in such a manner as to create the impression that they were Serbs from the Kingdom of Serbia.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

or

66

On July 3, when the remains of the Archduke and his consort were brought from Serajevo to Vienna, the Serbian flag was very properly half-masted at the Serbian Legation in Vienna; noisy demonstrations took place in front of the legation, and the incident was referred to the next day under the heading: "Provocation by the Serbian Minister."

The "Case" Against Serbia

In the meantime a "case " against Serbia, resting upon a secret investigation in the prison of Serajevo, was in course of preparation; it had been intrusted to Austria's professional forger, Count Forgach, notorious especially by the Friedjung trial, who now fittingly occupied the post of permanent Under Secretary at the Foreign Office, and who, in the early days of July, provided the Hungarian correspondence bureau with a plentiful supply of falsehoods. On July 3 the following communication was issued to the press:

The inquiries made up to the present prove conclusively that the outrage is the work of a conspiracy. Besides the two perpetrators, a considerable number of persons have been arrested, mostly young men, who are also, like the perpetrators, proved to have been employed by the Belgrade Narodna Odbrana (National Defense) in order to commit the outrage, and who were supplied in Belgrade with bombs and revolvers.

The Foreign Office in Vienna, however, probably realized that zeal was outrunning discretion, for on the same

*R. W. Seaton-Watson, "The War and Democracy," London, 1915.

date, late at night, the newspapers received the following request:

We beg the editor not to publish the report relating to the Serajevo outrage, which appeared in our evening's bulletin.

From this moment profound silence fell upon the inquiry at Serajevo and upon the proceedings at the Foreign Office. The attempt to trace the crime to any responsible quarters in Serbia was evidently beyond the power of even Count Forgach. Count Berchtold discontinued the usual weekly receptions at the Ballplatz; he refused to discuss the Serajevo outrage with the representatives of foreign countries, or, if discussion did arise, care was taken to dispel all apprehension and suspicion that Austria-Hungary was meditating any serious action against Serbia. Petrograd was assured that the step to be taken at Belgrade would be of a conciliatory character; the French Ambassador was told that only such demands would be put forward as Serbia would be able to accept without difficulty. The press campaign, nevertheless, continued unabated and took its tone from the utterance of the inspired Neue Freie Presse: "We have to settle matters with Serbia by war and if we must come to war later, then it is better to see the matter through now."

* * *

On July 20, 1914, Mr. Jovanovitch, then Serbian Minister in Vienna, ciphered to Mr. Pashitch, the Premier:

It is very difficult, almost impossible, to discover here anything positive as to the real intentions of Austro-Hungary. The mot d'ordre is to maintain absolute secrecy about everything that is being done. Judging by the articles in our newspapers, Belgrade is taking an optimistic view of the question pending with Austria-Hungary. There is, however, no place for optimism. That which is chiefly to be feared and is highly probable is that Austria is preparing for war against Serbia. The general conviction that prevails here is that it would be nothing less than suicide if Austria-Hungary once more failed to take advantage of the opportunity to act against Serbia. It is believed that the two opportunities previously missed-annexation of Bosnia and the Balkan war-have been extremely harmful to Austria-Hungary. In addition to this, there is the still more deeply rooted opinion that Serbia, after her two wars, is completely exhausted, and that a war against Serbia would in fact merely

« ПретходнаНастави »