To this imposing array, the patriots could only oppose a few pamphlets issued by the editor Bryan Hill, soon prohibited, and copies of Belgian, French and English papers, which were smuggled at great risk, and consequently were very expensive.  Still, before the fall of Antwerp, it was practically impossible for the Germans to stop private letters and newspapers passing from the unoccupied to the occupied part of the country.  Besides, they had more important business on hand.  Here again, it was only after the second month of occupation that the pressure increased.  During October and November, several people were condemned to heavy fines and to periods of imprisonment for circulating written and even verbal news.  The Dutch frontier was closed, wherever no natural obstacle intervened, by a continuous line of barbed wire and electrified wire.  Passports were only granted to the few people engaged in the work of relief and to those who could prove that it was essential to the interests of their business that they should leave the country for a time.  The postal service being reorganized under German control, any other method of communication was severely prosecuted.  At the end of 1914, several messengers lost their lives in attempting to cross the Dutch frontier.  Under such conditions it is easy to understand that, in spite of the efforts made by the anonymous editors of two or three prohibited papers, such as La Libre Belgique, the bulk of the population was practically cut off from the rest of the world and was compelled to read, if they read at all, the pro-German papers and the German posters.  The only wells left from which the people could drink were poisoned.

* * * * *

The German Press Bureau in Brussels, openly recognised by the administration and formerly the headquarters of Baron von Bissing’s son, set to work in three principal directions.  It aimed at separating the Belgians from the Allies, then at separating the people from King Albert and his Government, and finally at reviving the old language quarrel between Walloons and Flemings.

The campaign against the Allies, though still carried on whenever the opportunity arises, was specially violent at the beginning, when the Germans had not yet given up all hope of detaching King Albert from the Alliance (August-September, 1914).  It was perhaps the most dangerous line of attack because it did not imply any breach of patriotism.  On the contrary it suggested that Belgium had been duped by the Allies, and especially by England, who had never meant to come to her help and who had used her as a catspaw, leaving her to bear all the brunt of the German assault in an unequal and heroic struggle.  It was accompanied by a constant flow of war news exaggerating the German successes and suggesting that, even if they ever had the intention of delivering Belgium, the Allies would no longer be in a position to do so.