September 20, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
^ journal from a legation 
By Hugh Gibson (First Secretary of the American Legation in Brussels) 
On the day following the German occupation of Brussels, 
Mr. Gibson went for a imlk through the town. He gives 
a different version of that wonderful German orderliness 
and resource of whirh we used to hear so much. A exl 
'week \Mr. Gibson will tell of the " Last hours of Edith 
Cavell," onf of (he most pathetic stories of the war. 
Mr. Gibson was entrusted with Miss Cavell's defence. 
» 
ryRUSSELS, A ugusl 2xst, 1914. — The courtyard of the 
X~j Hotel de Ville, where so many sovereigns have been 
•^-^ received in state, was filled with horses and motors. The 
discarded uniforms of the Garile Civique were piled high 
on one side as if for a rummage sale. Beer bottles were 
everywhere. In the beautiful Gothic room hung with the 
battle flags of several centuries, there are a hundred beds 
^a dormitory for the officers who are not quartered at the 
neighbouring hotels. 
The marvellous order and system which so compelled our 
admiration yesterday was not in evidence. There were a 
lot of sentries at the door and they took care to jab a bayonet 
into you and tell you that you could not enter ; any sort of 
reply seemed to satisfy them, and you were allowed to go right 
up to the landing where the General had established him- 
self in state at a couple of huge tables. Here confusion 
reigned supreme. There were staff officers in abundance, 
but none of them seemed to have the slightest authority, and 
the old man had them all so completely cowed that they did 
not dare express an opinion or ask for a decision. The 
General himself is a little tubby man who looks as though he 
might Ix; about fifty-fivr; ; his face is red as fire when it is 
not purple, and the way he rages about is enough to make 
Olympus tremble. The crowd of frightened people who came 
to the Hotel de \'ille for laisser-passers and other pajjers all 
found their way straight to his office ; no one was on hand 
to sort them out and distribute them among the various 
bureaus of the civil administration. Even the staff officers 
did very little to spare their chief and head off the crowd. 
They would come right up to him at his table and shove a 
pi^ce d'identite imder his nose with a tremulous request for 
a vise ; he would turn upon them and growl, " Bas bossible : 
keineZeit: laissez mois dranquille, nom de D. . .!" He switched 
languages with wonderful facility, and his cuss words were 
equally effective in any language that he tried. Just as 
with us, every one wanted something quite out of the question 
and then insisted on arguing alwut the answer that they got. 
A man would come up to the General and say that he wanted 
to get a pass to go to Namur. The General would say impa- 
tiently that it was quite impossible, that German troops were 
operating over all that territory and that no one could be allowed 
to pass for several days. Then Mr. Man would say that that 
was no doubt true but that he must go because he had a wife 
or a family or a business or something else that he wanted to 
get to. As he talked the General would be getting redder and 
redder, and when about to explode he would spring to his 
feet and advance upon his tormentor waving his arms and 
roaring at him to get the — — — — — c»ut of 
there. Not satisfied with that, he invariably availed himself 
of the opportunity of being on his feet to chase all the 
assembled crowd down the stairs and to scream at all the 
officers in attendance for having allowed all this crowd 
to gather. Then he would sit down and go through the 
same performance from the beginning. I was there off and 
on for more than two hours, and I know that in that time 
he did not do four minutes' continuous uninterrupted work. 
Had it not been for the poor frightened people and the general 
seriousness of the situation it would have been screamingly 
funny and worth staying indefinitely to sec. 
I liad my share of the trouble. 1 explained my errand to 
an aide-de-camp artd asked him to see that proper instruc- 
tions were given for the sending of the telegrams. He took 
them and went away. Then after a few minutes he came 
gravely back, clicked his heels, and- announced that there 
was no telegraph communication with the outside world, 
and that he did not know when it would be re-established. 
I asked him to go back to the General, who in the meantime 
had retreated to the Gothic room and had locked himself 
in with a group of officers. My friend came back again, 
rather red in the face, and said he had authority to stamp 
my telegrams and let them go. He put the rubber stamp 
on them and said I could take them. I said that was all 
very well, but where could I take them since the telegraph 
offices were closed. He went off again and came back with 
the word that the office in the central bureau was working for 
official messages. I got into the motor with tbc Italian 
Secretary, who had a similar task, and together we went to 
the central bureau. It was nailed up tight and the Gernian 
sentries on guard at the door swore to us by their Ehrenuoii 
that there was absolutely nothing doing. 
An Infuriated General 
Back we went to the Hotel de Ville. Our friend the A.D.C. 
had disappeared, but we got hold of another and asked him 
to inform himself. He went away and we spent a few 
minutes watching the General blow up everybody in sight ; 
when the A.D.C. came back he smilingly announced that there 
was no way of getting the messages out on the wire ; that 
the best thing we could do would be to send a courier to 
Holland and telegraph from there. I told him to go back 
and get anot.her answer. When he came back ne.xt time he 
had the glad news that the office had really been established 
in the Post Office and that orders had been sent over there to 
have our cables received and lent at once. Away we went 
again, only to find that the latest bulletin was just as good as 
the others ; the Post Office was closed up just as tight as 
the other office, and the sentries turned us away with a weary 
explanation that there was not a living soul inside, as though 
they had explained it a thousand times since they had been on 
duty. 
By this time the wild goose chasing was getting a little bit 
nionotonous, and when we got back to the headquarters I 
announced with some emphasis to the first A.D.C. that I 
could reach that I did not care to do any more of it ; that I 
wanted him to get me the right information and do it right 
away, so that I should not have to go back to my chief and 
report any more futile errands. He went away in some 
trepidation and was gone some time. Presently the General 
came out himself, seething in his best manner. 
" A qui tout ce tas de depeches ? " roars he. 
" A moi," says I, knowing the language. 
He then announced in a voice of thunder that they were 
all wrong, and that he was having them rewritten ; before I 
could summon enough breath to sliout him down and protest, 
he had gone into another room and slammed the door. I 
rushed back to my trusty A.D.C. and told him to get me 
those telegrams right away ; he came back with word that 
they would be sent after correction. I said that under no 
circumstances could they send out a word over the signature 
of the Aiiierican Minister without his having written it him- 
self. He came back and said he could not get the cables. 
I started to walk into the office myself to get them, only to 
bump into the General coming out with the messages in his 
hand. He threw them down on a table and began telling a 
young officer what corrections to make on the telegraph 
form itself. I protested vigorously against any such pro- 
ceeding, telling him that we should be glad to have his views 
as to any errors in our message, but that he could not touch 
a letter in any official message. At this stage of the game he 
was summoned to the office of the Burgomaster and 
rushed off with a string of oaths that would have made an 
Arizona CoiC-puncher take off his hat. The young officer 
started calmly interlining the message, so I reached over and 
took it away from him with the statement that I would report 
to my chief what had happened. He was all aflutter and 
asked that I remain as the General would not be long. I 
could not see any use in waiting longer, however, and made 
as dignified a retreat as possible under the circumstances. 
There were a number of cables in the handful I had carried 
around that were being sent in the interest of the German 
(iovernment and of German subjects, and I took good care to 
tell the young man that while we were glad to do anything 
reasonable for them or for their people, we had stood for a 
good deal more than they had a right to expect, and that 
these cables would stay on my desk until such time as they 
got ready to make a proper arrangement for our communica- 
tions. Now we shall settle down and see <^vhat happens 
next. 
During the afternoon a lot of correspondents came in and 
gave an amusing account of what the General had done for 
them. He had received them cordially and had given them 
a very pleasing interview, making an extended statement 
about the alleged German atrocities. Could they send their 
messages through to their papers ? Certainly ! Of course, the 
General would have to read the stories, and approve the sub- 
ject matter ? Naturally ! ! ! . The men sat down in great en- 
thusiasm and wrote out their stories, giving full credit to the 
German army for the orderly way they got it, the excellence 
of their appearaK^e and behaviour, and the calm that 
