Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1918-06-04
The Truth About Belgium
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BY BRAND WHITLOCK

doubling any more, it was to despair
of the future of the human race.
And even then we scarcely realized
then. in all their sheer and utter
savagery. We heard too many;
scores and hundred and thousands
of such recitals were told by the
refugees-told by refugees from all
those doomed towns in eastern Bel
GUM; myriad repetitions of ind1vid-
ual instances, all essentially the
same, until the mass of them over
powered the imagination and sat
urated the mind with their horror.
Words lost their meaning-were un-
able longer to depict the sinister and
tragic significance of the events they
would describe, and became cold and
bald, like statistics or terms OF gen
eralization. 1t all seemc1 too gro
tesuue, too patiently Impossible,
there before one, in Brussels, in the
midst of familiar things, in our own
time-in the "so-called twentieth
century" as the English parson
said, with. a humor that trust was
not unconscious,
1 might have had thousands of
such tales, but l did not seek them.
l had those that were brought to
me, and l have struck out all that
seems like exaggeration. l was
representing a neutral power, and
made it a point of honor to respect
that neutrality and to see that it was
respected. Only in the case of Lou
! vain did / seek information, and
then l felt that 1 had the right to
do so, because it was reported that
the rights of Americans were in
volved. Finally l ceased to listen to
the stories and turned the REALTORS
over to Gibson or to De Leval, and
at last even they ceased to listen.
OF what use? 1t was all cumulative,
corroborative. Any good trial judge
would have long since said, 81 don't
care to hear any more on that
point
An so I have left out of this ac-
count much that was told and have
confined my statements to proved
and admitted facts. l have not told
about the old soldier in Brussels, I'm
vieux sabreur. who used to tell his
group in the estaminet when he
slipped his faro of an afternoon how,
walking along the road from Alost
to Brussels. on the goth of August,
he saw a Uhlan stab a boy, little
he, the viex sabreur, had folded his
arms and shouted "Lache!" three
times at the Uhlan.
The reason 1 would not offer this
in evidence is the fact, principally,
of that detail about the folded arms.
That is of the cinema, Individually,
and 1 have a constitutional dislike
for romanticism, and one finds as
af II amnnp soldiers with
their swanking, as among the novel
lists.
There are many such, and there
are many that 1 cannot bring my
self to repeat. They belong to the
smokingroom, and even there one
would be ashamed to repeat them;
they are more proper for patholog-
ical study than for the mere cur1os-
ity of the lay mind. Rape was COM
mon. and at certain places even nuns
were not spared. Cardinal Mercier's
correspondence with the late Cover
nor-General Won Kissing on this DEL
icate point is important.
One of the allegations that seems
to have aroused an almost morDld
curiosity is that which relates to the
cutting off of hands of little children.
We used to hear the story often IN
Belgium, but never in form that
seemed to me wholly convincing. In
the report of the English Commls.
sion there is given the testimony OF
three witnesses who claim to nave
seen this thing at Malines. We had
that story too, Immediately after the
fall of Antwerp. but the testimony IS
excluded from the report OF the BEL
gian commission.
CONTINUED Next Issue)
Published by special arrangement
with the Mcclure Newspaper Syndi-
cate. Copyright. 1918. by Brand
Whitlock. under the title Memories
of Belgium Under the German Occu-
nation" All rights reserved. Copy
righted in Great Britain, Canada and
Australia. All rights reserved fof
France. Belgium, Holland. Italy.
Spain. Russia and the Scandinavian
countries.)