Belgian history, when so many
leaders, so many patriots, have been imprisoned, deported or shot, after
twenty-nine months of constant threats and persecutions, we might ask
ourselves: Is Belgium at last cowed into submission?

Listen, then, to Belgium's voice, not to the voice of the refugees, not
even to the voice of the King and his Government, but to the voice of
these miserable "slaves" whom Germany is trying to starve into
submission. Letters have been dropped from these cattle trucks rolling
towards Germany or towards the French front. They all tell us of the
unshakeable resolution of the men never to sign an agreement to go to
Germany, and never to work for the enemy: "We will never work for the
Germans and never put our name on paper" (_onze naam on papier
zetten_)--"We will not work for them. Do the same when you are taken."
(_Faites de meme quand tu dois aller_.) Two young men imprisoned in
Ghent write to their father: "They will have to make us fast a long time
before we consent to work for the King of Prussia." Another man who was
stopped when attempting to escape writes: "They tell us here that the
Germans will make us work even if we do not sign an engagement. It would
be abominable. _Take heart, the hour of deliverance will strike one day,
after all_." Another workman sends the following message to his
employer: "We are here two thousand and three hundred men. They cannot
annihilate us. _It is not right that our fate should be better than that
of our brothers who suffer and fight at the front_. We cannot make a
step without being threatened by the gun or the bayonet of our jailors.
_I am hungry ... but I will not work for them_."

And as the slave raids reach one province after another from Flanders to
Antwerp, from Hainant to Brabant, as the fatal list of deportees
increases from 20,000 to 50,000, from 50,000 to 100,000, from 100,000 to
200,000, whilst the cries of women and children are heard in the
streets, whilst the modern slaves tramp along the roads carrying a light
bundle of clothes on their shoulders, from everywhere in Belgium the
strongest protests are sent to the Governor General, by the communes
which will not consent to give the names of the unemployed, by the
magistrates who will not see the last guarantees of individual right
trampled upon, by the Socialist syndicates which are defending the right
of the workmen not to work against their own country, by the chiefs of
industry who show cle