"The Enslavement of Belgium."

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 249, 9 February 1917, Page 3 (Supplement)

"The Enslavement of Belgium."

(Robert W. Chambers is one of the mo ; ,t brilliant and widely known of American novelists. Ho began l'<s career as an artist and illustrator, exhibited in the Paris Salon oi' 1880 '-"it soon abandoned paint for ink. Tho attention of the literary world ivas Jir&t attracted to him by the publicntion of "The King in Yellow' in li> ( J3, which announced the arrival of a, defin te new talent. Since then a ri"h stream o? novels and short stories has come from him. These include " !o!e," "The 1 iring Line," '"The Danger Mark, just to mention a fow of hi* many titles. Millions of copies of his works have been sold. Mr. Cliamlmrs is a member of the Institute cf Arts and Letters, and reside.i in New York.)

r\F all the abominable devilry pra-c----tised in this most hellish war, the condemnation of slavery of the Belgian nation is the most damnable. Is this nation going to say nothing? Do nothing? This nation which fought one war to preserve itself from human slavery and which fought another to abolish from the land a human slavery on less vile!

Is this nation going to remain seated comfortably in the grandstand, in strictly ncutrail observation, experiencing agreeably moral shudders while in the bloody arena Mow l'ru'sian Slavers drive Belgian si.aves —forty thousand ot them so far —toward the tragic- Calvarjwiiero already the hist act is staged tiie crucifixion cn masse of an entire people? Three hundred thousand slaves! Does that mean an appeal to you?

Threo hundred thousand are to be driven into slavery. That is the estimate for the first batch—white people very greatly resembling ourselves, people who are as familiar types to any one of us as our own next door neighbours, as our own relatives, our own immediate families. Think just for a moment! and II thinking be an unusual effort, make that effort for one moment! Picture to yourself a file of armed foreign soldiers —downstairs in your hall or sitting room, at your aaprt-mcnt door, in the vestibule, of your boarding house, silent, sullen men under iron discipline, obeying iron orders. Your father, your brother, husband, your mother, sisters, daughters—yours —go with this file, of forc : gn soldiers without time to dress properly, to cat, D snatch up .a cloak for warmth. FORCED TO MAKE WAR MUNITIONS TO US.-. AGAINST THEIR o\\ a KIN. They do not know their destination, nor do you. Perhaps the file of soldiers do not know, nor even possibly, the offcer in command. Only Prussian Militarism knows, only the overseers of the Supremo War Lord —the Great White Slavers, William and Son, Drivers of Slaves, the German Empire, dealers n and exploiters of human being". They may l>o herded into cattle cars ■without food, without clothing to keep them warm, without even a cup of water to quench their thirst. This already has happened to thousands. They may bo sent to work in iron mines, coal mines; they may be driven into the steel plants. Thousands already have been so driven—forced to work for their Prussian conquerors, forced to aid in making war munitions to be used against their own kin, their own people, their own native land.

For it is either that or the disciplinary resentment of Hohenzollem and Co., White Slavers —either tho Belgian slaves submit and go and accept the wages which permit them to exist a while longer on earth, or they refuse and are lashed into service without the pitiable stipend which might keep the militant of their families from starvation.

Th : s is no exaggeration, no fantastic dream of hell on earth; this is what is happening to-day to people like you and yours; what is going on while you read your paper over your morning coffee or drowse over it after dinner, soothed by your cigar and a satisfied American eonscience.

Yon can read th is and then go to the movies if you are that kind. You can read in your paper of the dreadful scenes enacted every hour of yesterday and to-day and to-morrow; scenes n the crippled, devastated, outraged land o 1 " Belgium, where a brave and honourable and guiltless people are being driven into human slavery. Then go to your cafe or theatre or cabaret if you can and smugly discharge your conscience of further responsibility. Go to your concert or lecture; if you arc built that way go to your church or your prayer meeting or to your confessor, if it's in \ ou to do so without one more thought, without one effort in behalf of these dy-

ing ones who aro being made ready for a crucifixion en masse. Is there no man in America to mobilise us as a nation?

Is there not .in this quiet land that dreams itself prosperous and secure, one* voico to bo raised against the perpetration of th s infamy of all the ages—against the Great White Slavery business of Hohenzollem and Co.? Is there no man in authority to mobilise us as a nation against the monstrous business now being transacted by the Pru-sian Slavers of Men, Slavers of .Vankuid ?

1 j Before you go to your movies, your I theatres, your restaurants, your concerts, lectures, dances, clubs, before you I tako your many million paths to pleasure, before even you go to your church or your synagogue, or to any temple wherein you are accustomed to recognise, worship, adore tho Most High whom yen pretend to serve, sit down, | writo your protest to your Congress- . man, to tho Senator who represents ! your State, to tho President of the . United States, and placo upon eternal ■ locord your just anger, your horror, I your contempt for the slavers who deal I to day ill tho flesh and blood of white men and women who were born as free I as you and yours.

| This peaceful land has looked on "n I official silence while Belgium burned to j cinders before our eyes. Under our yes have passed the dread, horrible I scenes of masacre. of outrage, of brutal I cruelties unspeakable, of little children i bayoneted and mutilated, women outJ raged in public market places, women slashed crippled, disembowelled, fleeing into burning houses; of good priests executed, burgomasters and citizens lwrded in hundreds before the firing squads; of brave nurses tried and sentenced at midnight amid mil the lurid horror of the Reign of Terror, condemned. executed in flame-shot darkness.

We witnessed tho unprovoked invrwon oi : a peaceful, prosperous, upright, God-fearing nation; xo saw its ancient beauties battered to dust, the very soil of its land blown into annihilation so that whero shells foil no crops car. grow for a century. Wo saw its citizens imprisoned, outraged, robbed, fined, disciplined, murdered. And now still seated comfortably on the grandstand. we see tho crowning tragedy —• threo hundred thousand human slaves, tho first batch herded by bayonets across the arena, that ft! thy wallow of the Prussian swine, Hohenzollem and Co., White Slavers of Europe.

Ten minute;i to voice your protest to your President in Washington—a two cent stamp —then go to your theatre or to your placo of worship; but until you do this much, now, you aro fit for neither theatre nor the church of a God who is watching you closer than you think Ho is. THIS LAND OF FREEDOM ALONE CAN HALT THE MURDER OF BELGIUM. This is no time for politics, lor nationa'l or international jealousies, for tho pettier personal or local disputes and differences. What is being done, now, while you lead this, : s not German, nor even Prussian, although done by Prussians n Prussia's name. It is Hohenzollem and hellish; it is the work of tlve decadent human brain gone rotten to the edge of madness. It is the monstrous cruelty of a crippled intellect, a horror against nature. an insanity that capers and mouths and gibbers and spits :n the face of the civilisation of the entire world.

Tt is doomed. But in God's name, before it murders the souls as weil as tho minds and bodies of a whole nation, write a dozen words to your President in Washington and tell him to stop t new.

And the Wlrte Slavers of Prussia will surely hai'.t if the warning cry rises from this land of freedom—entire, undivided, and of a single mind.