TWO YEARS UNDER GERMAN RULE.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 257, 9 March 1917, Page 3 (Supplement)

TWO YEARS UNDER GERMAN RULE.

The writer—a distinguished Belgian. whose name for obvious reasons cannot be disclosed —recently effecte d a daring escape from Brussels. I left Brussels less than a mont'i ago. 1 had resolved to get through the frontiei into Holland and thence to London. .Many of my compatriots, and even one or two of my own personal friends, had been shot in similar attempts, sc I well knew the hazardous nature of my enterprise. The whole of the frontier is protected by a double line of highly electrified wires with a German sentry patrolling every two hundred yards. The dash through to safety cannot, therefore, be lightly undertaken. It took me four day's and five nights cf tedious waiting, hiding in hedges and dtches, before my opportunity arrived. A favourite method of negotiating the menacing electrified wires is to get a wooden barrel, with the ends knocked out, and push this between the wires and crawl through it. This is how I made a timcrous and hurried exit from the land of my birth in order, I hope, to join tho Belgian Army. I have heard from the Belgian authorities here that over j 27,000 Belgian young men have sue- : ceeded in escaping in order to join j the Army, since November. 1014. ! These escapes are now becoming rare j owing to the increasing difficulties. I But my purpose is to write of j Brussels as it is to-day, after two .

years beneath the German yoke. Imagine living in London with all your newspapers stopped; all your theatres closed; your home open nt all hours of the day or night to the entry of any brutal and aggressive German who may care to trump up a charge on some score o rother of alleged suspicion. For all but the very wealthiest classes bread and jiotatoes and fats for soup-making are the only forms of food procurable, and these only in minimum quantities bv means of the Belgian relief organisations' food tickets. Meat is an unheard of luxury in the homes of the poor and middle classes, a fact which will readily be understood when I say that on the day I left a leg of mutton cost 30s. and a chicken l">s. Beef was 10s. per >b., candles cost lOd each. Sugar and butter cannot be bought for any money.

These privations the inhabitants are quite prepared to accent as the ordinary fortunes of war. But this is by no means all. Brussels to-day is a city of unbeautiful nonsense. The Hun conqueror has made a thousand impossibly absurd by-laws. Each day sees a dozen or more new or revised proclamations, each one devised with a fiendish delight in the people's discomfort.

On Monday, for instance, we may be privileged to ride bicycles; o'i Tuesday this is prohibited under penalty of a heavy fine or imprisonment. Fcr a period we need not be home until eleven at night. Suddenly, with no further warning than the posting of proclamations, no one is allowed out after seven in the c.ve*iing. In short, the whole life of Brussels to-day is regulated by the eternal German proclamation.

Baron Von B'ssing, the German Governor of the' city, is a pastmaster in these attempts at demoralisation. He employs 600 German women ;'S spies. So the spirit of Belgium is for ever in conflict with the tyranny of Prussia.

For instance. Independence Day on July 21 was celebrated in the usual

LIFE TO DAY IN THE BELGIAN CAPITAL.

JSY A RECENTLY ESCAPED BELGIAN.

. way last year by the closing of all | shops, and a national holiday was ob- , served. This year Von Bussing issued , a proclamation decreeing that a policy of "business as usual" must b.; observed, and that all premises must l:e opened. A fine of 10,000 francs ,or imprisonment were the alternatives. Accordingly, all shops were cpened, but it was understood between ourselves that no business whatever should oe transacted. Courtois Havman. for instance, the finest conf<_e- ' tioners in the Ruße Neuve. famous for their wonderful window dressing, ! solemnly pulled up their blinds at the ■-.•sua! time to display nothing more than a broom in one window and a pail and wash flannel in the other! I One of the largest ca f es took down its shutters, but the tables and chairs for customers had disappeared, with the exception of one—this was occupied all the day by the proprietor and waiters playing cards! So it was throughout the city. Some davs we were permitted to travel by train: some days we were not. The use of motor-cars is absolutely prohibited to the Belgians, and no telephones are allowed. When I left Brussels there were about 10.000 of the inhabitants in prison fcr political and other offences. WONDERFUL SPIRIT OF BRUSSELS.

Considering that we have now suffered over two years of such treat- ' inert, the spirit of Brussels is truly i wonderful. The most remarkable inj stance of this is shown" in the publi- ■ cation of "La Libre Belgique," which has continued without intermission

throughout the whole of the German j occupation, in spite of the fact that an order has been issued that anyone l arrested in connection with its publication ir subject to the death pen- ! alty, and anyone who will help in i discovering the publishers will be re-

warded with 1. r >o,ooo francs. This ■ paper is edited and printed, accor.l----j ing to the address given, "in an automobile cellar."

Apart from such spirited efforts

, the only news available is that con- | tained in the newspapers printed in our own language hv tho Germans, and so cunningly edited that they might be' our own. Our taste >n journalism is most carefully considered, and all the best features of our own pre-war journals embodied. But the editors are for ever pointing cut j how England in particular, and the Allies in general, have betrayed or j abandoned us. continually reiterating ; that the relief from the German oppression, for which we are waiting | so patiently, if not likely to be lvur- ( ried until the Allies are successful in other directions which promise to be , mere profitable to them, j Still, in spite of all its sufferings, I Brussels considers itself fortunate inasmuch as the neutral Legations ; which are- still occupied have the efj feet of preventing the German doing i anything like his worst. This is proi bably the reason why the city has not ! yet been visited bv that cruellest of j all punishments—the enslavement of j batches of men and women who are carried off into Germany.

What was happening in ether parts of the country I could only judge frotn hearsay as T hurried through to the frontier, but T am convinced that the; condition of affairs is considerably worse than anything that is taking place in Brussels. In many parrs of Belgium the nosition of the inhabitants is too horrible for words.