December 26, 1918 
LAND S» WATER 
11 
hours in one house, tapping the walls and tables for hidden 
recesses, turning out drawers, scattering the linen and bed- 
clothes and personal belongings about the rooms — leaving 
everything in disorder. But in vain. The hiding-places 
were there, but seldom discovered. Again and again I was 
shown the ingenious devices by which the treasured wool 
and copper were preserved. 
Other things, too, were hidden — things which were Ukely 
to be confisca'tcd. I met an English prisoner who had assisted 
to dig out a motor car, which had been completely buried, 
and had never been found. The Germans took all the wine 
they could lay their hands on, and had the effrontery to give 
bans at one franc a bottle in payment for choice vintage wines. 
But there were few families which did not succeed in hiding 
some portion, at least, of their pre-war stocks. 
The poor, on the whole, were less oppressed than the rich. 
Food became inordinately dear, and they suffered always 
from insufficient nourishment. But in this respect they were 
no worse off than the German poor, who for a long time have 
been in a state of semi-starvation ; indeed, they were slightly 
better off, thanks to the Comite d' Alimentation, administered 
originally by the Americans. If they were charged with any 
act of disrespect to German authority, they \yould be fined 
when they had money ; or packed oi^ to prison when they 
had none. 
German Thievery 
But the well-to-do people were cdways under surveillance. 
Above all things the Germans wanted money, and they were 
apparently anxious to find rich people guilty of offences in 
order to rob them by the simple process of fining. Also the 
influential class was the class which they wished to cow. 
If any German denounced a Belgian on the most frivolous 
charge, the latter was at once sent for, cross-examined, and 
perhaps punished with fine or imprisonment. "Do you dare 
to refuse to answer my questions ? " said a German to a young 
girl who had been sent for to give evidence against other 
Belgians. " Are you aware that you are alone, and absolutely 
in my power ? " ^ He did not actually carry out the imphed 
threat, but the fact that women could at any time be thus 
liable to insult made hfe at all times frightening and nerve- 
racking. The officials also took pleasure in putting cliildish 
indignities upon prominent people. It was a favourite 
practice to order Belgian men to go and " stand in the comer" 
for "being rude" or "being naughty." This sort of petty 
indignity appealed immensely to the official sense of humour. 
It is amazing how they seem t6 have gone out of their way 
to make themselves hated. 
Those who were sent to prison never forgot the experience 
they suffered, especially from hunger, dirt, cold, and bad 
air. For women the ordeal was still more painful. The 
gaolers were men, and had the power of looking in on the 
prisoners at any hour in the day or night. For those who 
were charged with serious offences, prison hfe was appalUng. 
I met an Enghshman who was chsffged with espionage. He 
was first condemned to death, but in view of the fact that the 
evidence against him was doubtful, his sentence was com- 
muted to five years' imprisonment. He was sent to a place 
outside Brussels which had once been a Belgian civil prison, 
but long before the war had been condemned as unfit. He 
underwent sohtary confinement in a cell which was dark and 
wet. He suffered tortures from cold, and became, as he 
believes, permanently rheumatic. His food consisted of a 
thin, nauseating soup and a Httle bread, and he was always 
half-famished with hunger. When I saw him, though his 
Belgian friends had been doing their best to restore him, 
he was stiU thin, emaciated, and anaemic looking. 
During the last day or two of my stay in Brussels British 
and other prisoners released from Germany began to arrive 
in large numbers. The Germans made no attempt to hand 
them over formally to the British. They simply let them 
loose, and left them to find their way as best they could back 
to Belgium. Trains began arriving from Namur full of these 
poor fellows, who were suffering from long privation and 
recent famine. Such a sudden and big influx of destitute 
men had not been foreseen, and for a time there seemed to 
be no constituted British authority for dealing with them, 
excepting one lieutenant and three or four men who were 
installed at the Palais d'Ete to tide over the emergency. 
Late one night more of these men arrived, and between 
twelve and one in the morning I found myself appealed to 
by some compassionate Belgians to see what could be done 
there and then to feed them. Thanks to some representa- 
tives of tlie Belgian Comite Nationale, and to the personal 
energy of Monsieur Remain Boin, we secured a car-load 
of bread to feed about a thousand of these prisoners, pending 
the preparation of a more adequate meal. The British 
Minister, who had just arrived in Brussels, took the matter 
up in the morning, and as I had to leave the town almost 
immediately I cannot say what happened afterwards. But 
the public ought to be aware of the fact that hundreds of. 
thousands of British prisoners of war, who have been suffer- 
ing for months, and in some cases years, of hunger and priva- 
tion, have already arrived in, or are on their way to, England ; 
and that thousands of these men will not be At for work for 
a long time to come. 
Before this incident I had already met, on three separate 
occasions, in a private house, small parties of British prisoners 
who had escaped, and had been assisted and hidden by civilians 
in Belgium. One was a New Zealand regimental quarter- 
master-sergeant, one was a corporal, the rest, I believe, 
were privates. It is not within the scope of this article to 
record the thrilhng stories of their capture, confinement, 
escape, and concealment. I need hardly say that the average 
British soldier is not given to rhetoric or undue embellish- 
ment ; and that if these various men all agreed, as they did, 
in their accounts of disgusting quarters, demoralising hunger, 
and the callousness of their German guards, these accounts 
must be taken as true. 
Certainly my whole view of the average German soldier 
and the average German official has undergone a complete 
change since I entered the liberated parts of Belgium, and 
Brussels in particular. Before, I thought that a large allow- 
ance must be made for4he natural prejudice engendered by 
war, for the inevitable bitterness of the Belgians, and for 
the exaggerations of the Press. Most British soldiers at the 
Front have not thought of the enemy as a hateful or hating 
enemy ; more usually, in my experience, they have thought 
of them, with some curiosity, as a set of men rather like 
themselves — a set of unfortunate devils condemned to the 
same monotony of shooting and being shot at. 
But tlie prisoners, who know the Germans, cannot take 
that amiable view. The Belgians, the most cultured and 
reasonable of them, do not take it. The rather humane and 
tolerant view held by most Englishmen on active service is 
not, I now believe, adequate to the facts. I too, during 
recent weeks, have been convinced that we were fighting 
men who were enemies not merely by accident, but men who, 
by some perversion of education and government, were, for 
the time being, at any rate, enemies fundamentally. 
True Johnny 
Johnny, sweetheart, can you be true 
To all those famous vows you've made, 
Will you love me as I love you. 
Until we both in earth are laid ? 
Or shall the old wives nod and say : 
" His love was only for the day : 
The mood goes -by, 
His fancies fly. 
And Mary's left to sigh ? " 
" Mary, alas, you've hit the truth ; 
And I with grief can but admit 
Hot-blooded haste controls my youth. 
My idle fancies veer and flit 
From flower to flower, from tree to tree ; 
So when the moment catches me, 
Oh, love goes by, 
Away I fly, 
And leave my girl to sigh." 
O, can you but foretell the day, 
Johnny, when this sad change may be. 
When light and gay you turn away. 
And laugh and break the heart in me ? 
For, like a nut, for true love's sake 
My faithful heart must crack and break ; 
When love goes by 
And fancies fly. 
Then Mary here must die. 
Wlien the sun turns against the clock, 
When Avon waters upward flow. 
When eggs are laid by barn-door cock. 
But dusty hens do strut and crow. 
When up is down, when left is right. 
Why, then, I'll break the troth I plight. 
With careless eye 
Away I'll fly. 
And Mary here may die. 
Robert Graves. 
