File No. 855.48/719
The Minister in Belgium ( Whitlock ) to the Secretary of State
[Received March 25.]
Sir: I have the honor to report that members of the Belgian Government have received information from the occupied portion of Belgium to the effect that the Germans, in case they should find sufficient foodstuffs in Russia, may order the Commission for Relief to discontinue its work and destroy the National Committee, and several of the Ministers here have expressed the fear that if the imports of the Commission were reduced this might intensify the probability of such action. They think that in case the Germans [Page 474] felt that they could provide sufficient foodstuffs themselves they would turn the feeding of Belgium over to committees formed of “activists” in the Flemish movement, and by so doing seek still further to advance their scheme of dividing Belgium and of beating down resistance and enfeebling the national spirit. No active measures to this end have as yet been taken but the Belgian Government has the fear that there may be if the Germans should conclude that they were in a condition to order the discontinuance of the relief work now carried on by the National Committee and the Commission for Relief in Belgium.
The prospect of the necessity of reducing imports into the occupied portion of Belgium indeed is one that fills the Belgian Government with great concern. While the people there have borne the horrors of the war and the indignities and the injustices heaped upon them by the Germans with the greatest fortitude, and although in the midst of the German plots to divide them they still oppose a magnificent moral resistance to the invaders, the Ministers here fear that if they were to go hungry this resistance would be compromised, and perhaps the German maneuvers and suggestions in favor of peace would find a readier reception. They fear too that the statement of Hertling in the Reichstag the other day may be the forerunner to some peace offer to Belgium.
As I said in my despatch No. 106, dated March 1, 1918,1 the Belgian Government announced that it would not make peace without the consent of its allies, and to this view they would hold under all circumstances, but inasmuch as it has more than once been intimated that Germany was ready to conclude some arrangement with Belgium they fear that if the people were weakened behind them they might be placed in an embarrassing situation. The long duration of the war and the absence of any indication that it will soon be brought to an end makes it much more difficult to keep up the morale of the people, especially when communication is so difficult and dangerous. Only the other day the Baron Capelle, an official of the Belgian Foreign Office who remained in Belgium and has been in constant communication with the Government here, was condemned by the Germans to 10 years penal servitude. The reign of terror grows worse every day in Belgium. Condemnations to prison and to death for what the Germans call the “crime of patriotism,” when they do riot call it treason, are growing more and more frequent, and in addition to the strong effort to divide the Flemish and Walloons the Germans are trying to cut off all communication on the part of the [Page 475] Government at Havre with the patriotic leaders inside, and German agents and spies on this side of the line are trying, as I have shown in former despatches, to sow discord even in the Belgian Army.
The other day the King and Queen went to the south of France for a fortnight and visited the Italian front, and no sooner had they gone than the familiar vicious rumors were circulated in Havre, and indeed throughout France—one that the King had been forced to abdicate, another that he had been shot by one of his own soldiers, etc. To counteract the effect of these reports French newspapers have been publishing long articles in praise of the King and Queen, and lauding the heroism of Belgium and the Belgians, while the King himself paid a visit to the President of France.
All these défaitiste efforts of the Germans have failed to affect the morale, to impair the stamina, or to weaken the resistance of the Belgian people in or out of Belgium. But the effort to keep it intact as a nation, on the success of which the whole policy of the Allied cause depends, grows more and more difficult with the prolongation of the war and in a position complicated by so many problems the Belgian Government and the Belgian people, whose faith and hope and courage have never wavered, and who have a touching confidence in American friendship, are entitled to all our sympathy, our comfort, and our aid.
I have [etc.]
[For Dutch threat to seize cargoes of the Commission for Relief in Belgium see telegrams from the Minister in the Netherlands, Nos. 2284 and 2337 of April 10 and April 18, 1918, Supplement 1, volume II, pages 1455 and 1466, respectively.]
- Apparently refers to unnumbered telegram of Mar. 1, Supplement 1, vol. I, p. 144.↩