Madame Callebaut-Ringoot was her name. During the bombardment of the town she had retired to the cellar; but when the Germans entered to burn the city she stood there at the door watching the flames rolling up from the warehouses and factories in the distance. Nearer and nearer came the billowing tide of fire. A fountain of sparks shooting up from a house a few hundred yards away marked the advance of the firing squad into her street, but she never wavered. Down the street came the spoilers, relentless, ruthless, and remorseless, sparing nothing. They came like priests of the nether world, anointing each house with oil from the petrol flasks and with a firebrand dedicating it to the flames. Every one, panic-stricken, fled before them. Every one but this old lady, who stood there bidding defiance to all the Kaiser"s horses and all the Kaiser"s men.
"I saw them smashing in the door of the house across the way,"
said Madame Callebaut, "and when the flames burst forth they rushed over here, and I fell down on my knees before them, crying out, "For the love of Heaven, spare an old woman"s house!""
It must have been a dramatic, soul-curdling sight, with the wail of the woman rising above the crashing walls and the roaring flames.
And it must have been effective pleading to stop men in their wild rush l.u.s.ting to destroy. But Madame Callebaut was endowed with powerful emotions. Carried away in her recital of the events, she fell down on her knees before me, wringing her hands and pleading so piteously that I felt for a moment as if I were a fiendish Teuton with a firebrand about to set the old lady"s house afire. I can understand how the wildest men capitulated to such pleadings, and how they came down the steps to write, in big, clear words,
"NICHT ANBRENNEN"
(Do not set fire)
Only they unwittingly wrote it upon her neighbor"s walls, thus saving both houses.
How much a savior of other homes Madame Callebaut had been Termonde will never know. Certainly she made the firing squad first pause in the wild debauch of destruction. For frequently now an undamaged house stood with the words chalked on its front, "Only harmless old woman lives here; do not burn down."
Underneath were the numbers and initials of the particular corps of the Kaiser"s Imperial Army. Often the flames had committed Lese majeste by leaping onto the forbidden house, and there amidst the charred ruins stood a door or a wall bearing the mocking inscription, "Nicht Anbrennen."
Another house, belonging to Madame Louise Bal, bore the words, "Protected; Gute alte Leute hier" (good old people here). A great sh.e.l.l from a distant battery had totally disregarded this sign and had torn through the parlor, exploding in the back yard, ripping the clothes from the line, but touching neither of the inmates. As the Chinese amba.s.sador pertinently remarked when rea.s.sured by Whitlock that the Germans would not bombard the emba.s.sies, "Ah! but a cannon has no eyes."
These houses stood up like lone survivors above the wreckage wrought by fire and sh.e.l.l, and by contrast served to emphasize the dismal havoc everywhere. "So this was once a city," one mused to himself; "and these streets, now sounding with the footfalls of some returning sentry, did they once echo with the roar of traffic?
And those demolished shops, were they once filled with the babble of the traders? Over yonder in that structure, which looks so much like a church, did the faithful once come to pray and to worship G.o.d? Can it be that these courtyards, now held in the thrall of death-like silence, once rang to the laughter of the little children?"
One said to himself, "Surely this is some wild dream. Wake up."
But hardly a dream, for here were the ruins of a real city, and fresh ruins, too. Still curling up from the church was smoke from the burning rafters, and over there the hungry dogs, and the stragglers mournfully digging something out of the ruins. However preposterous it seemed, none the less it was a city that yesterday ran high with the tide of human life. And thousands of people, when they recall the lights and shadows, the pains and raptures, which make up the thing we call life, will think of Termonde. Thousands of people, when they think of home and all the tender memories that cl.u.s.ter round that word, say "Termonde."" And now where Termonde was there is a big black ragged spot--an ugly gaping wound in the landscape. There are a score of other wounds like that.
There are thousands of them.
There is one bleeding in every Belgian heart.
The sight of their desolated cities cut the soldiers to the quick.
They turned the names of those cities into battle cries. Shouting "Remember Termonde and Louvain," these Belgians sprang from the trenches and like wild men flung themselves upon the foe.
Chapter XI
Atrocities And The Socialist
"With these sentries holding us up at every cross-roads, there is no use trying to get to Antwerp," said the free-lance.
"Yes, there is," retorted the chauffeur. "Watch me the next time."
He beckoned to the first sentry barring the way, and, leaning over, whispered into the man"s ear a single word. The sentry saluted, and, stepping to one side, motioned us on in a manner almost deferential. We had hardly been compelled to stop.
After our tedious delays this was quite exhilarating. How our chauffeur obtained the pa.s.sword we did not know, nor did we challenge the inclusion of 8 francs extra in his memorandum of expenses. As indicated, he was a man of parts. The magic word of the day, "France," now opened every gate to us.
Behind the Antwerp fortifications the Belgian sappers and miners were on an organized rampage of destruction. On a wide zone every house, windmill and church was either going up in flames or being hammered level to the ground.
We came along as the oil was applied to an old house and saw the flames go crackling up through the rafters. The black smoke curled away across the wasted land and the fire glowed upon the stolid faces of the soldiers and the trembling woman who owned it.
To her it was a funeral pyre. Her home endeared by lifetime memories was being offered up on the altar of Liberty and Independence. Starting with the invaders on the western frontier, clear through to Antwerp by the sea, a wild black swathe had been burnt.
By such drastic methods s.p.a.ce was cleared for the guns in the Belgian forts, and to the advancing besiegers no protection would be offered from the raking fire. The heart of a steel-stock owner would have rejoiced to see the maze of wire entanglement that ran everywhere. In one place a tomato-field had been wired; the green vines, laden with their rich red fruit, were intertwined with the steel vines bearing their vicious blood-drawing barbs whose intent was to make the red field redder still. We had just pa.s.sed a gang digging man-holes and spitting them with stakes, when an officer cried:
"Stop! No further pa.s.sage here. You must turn back."
"Why?" we asked protestingly.
"The entire road is being mined," he replied.
Even as he spoke we could see a liquid explosive being poured into a sort of cup, and electric wires connected. The officer pictured to us a regiment of soldiers advancing, with the full tide of life running in their veins, laughing and singing as they marched in the smiling sun. Suddenly the road rocks and h.e.l.l heaves up beneath their feet; bodies are blown into the air and rained back to the earth in tiny fragments of human flesh; while brains are spattered over the ground, and every crevice runs a rivulet of blood. He sketched this in excellent English, adding:
"A magnificent climax for Christian civilzation, eh! And that"s my business. But what else can one do?"
For the task of setting this colossal stage for death, the entire peasant population had been mobilized to a.s.sist the soldiers. In self-defense Belgium was thus obliged to drive the dagger deep into her own bosom. It seemed indeed as if she suffered as much at her own hands, as at the hands of the enemy. To arrest the advancing scourge she impressed into her service dynamite, fire and flood. I saw the sluice-gates lifted and meadows which had been waving with the golden grain of autumn now turned into silver lakes. So suddenly had the waters covered the land that hay- c.o.c.ks bobbed upon the top of the flood, and peasants went out in boats to dredge for the beets and turnips which lay beneath the waters.
The roads were inundated and so we ran along an embankment which, like a levee, lifted itself above the water wastes. The sun, sinking down behind the flaming poplars in the west, was touching the rippling surface into myriad colors. It was like a trip through Fairyland, or it would have been, were not men on all sides busy preparing for the b.l.o.o.d.y shambles.
After these elaborate defensive works the Belgians laughed at any one taking Antwerp, the impregnable fortress of Western Europe.
The Germans laughed, too. But it was the ba.s.s, hollow laugh of their great guns placed ten to twenty miles away, and pouring into the city such a hurricane of sh.e.l.l and shrapnel that they forced its evacuation by the British and the Belgians. Through this vast array of works which the reception committee had designed for their slaughter, the Germans came marching in as if on dress parade.
A few sh.e.l.ls were even now crashing through Malines and had played havoc with the carillon in the cathedral tower. During a lull in the bombardment we climbed a stairway of the belfry where, above us, balanced great stones which a slight jar would send tumbling down. On and up we pa.s.sed vents and jagged holes which had been ripped through these ma.s.sive walls as if they were made of paper. It was enough to carry the weight of one"s somber reflections without the addition of cheerful queries of the movie-man as to "how would you feel if the German gunners suddenly turned loose again?"
We gathered in a deal of stone ornaments that had been shot down and struggled with a load of them to our car. Later they became a weight upon our conscience. When Cardinal Mercier starts the rebuilding of his cathedral, we might surprise him with the return of a considerable portion thereof. To fetch these souvenirs through to England, we were compelled to resort to all the tricks of a gang of smugglers.
I made also a first rate collection of German posters. By day I observed the location of these placards, announcing certain death to those who "sniped on German troops," "harbored courier- pigeons," or "destroyed" these self-same posters.
At night with trembling hands I laid cold compresses on them until the adhering paste gave way; then, tucking the wet sheets beneath my coat, I stole back to safety. At last in England I feasted my eyes on the precious doc.u.ments, dreaming of the time when posterity should rejoice in the possession of these posters relating to the German overlordship of Belgium, and give thanks to the courage of their collector. Unfortunately, their stained and torn appearance grated on the aesthetic sensibilities of the maid.
"Where are they?" I demanded on my return to my room one time, as I missed them.
"Those nasty papers?" she inquired naively.
"Those priceless souvenirs," I returned severely. She did not comprehend, but with a most aggravatingly sweet expression said:
"They were so dirty, sir, I burned them all up."
She couldn"t understand why I rewarded her with something akin to a fit of apoplexy, instead of a liberal tip. That day was a red-letter one for our photographers. They paid the price in the risks which constantly strained their nerves. But in it they garnered vastly more than in the fortnight they had hugged safety.
But, despite all our efforts, there was one object that we were after that we never did attain. That was a first-cla.s.s atrocity picture.
There were atrocity stories in endless variety, but not one that the camera could authenticate. People were growing chary of verbal a.s.surances of these horrors; they yearned for some photographic proof, and we yearned to furnish it.
"What features are you looking for?" was the question invariably put to us on discovering our cameras.
"Children with their hands cut off," we replied. "Are there any around here?"
"Oh, yes! Hundreds of them," was the invariable a.s.surance.
"Yes, but all we want is one--just one in flesh and bone. Where can we find that?"