If we remember that the total value of commercial transactions in Belgium, before the war, did not exceed ten million francs (400,000 pounds) per year, we shall realise the absurdity of the German argument which shifts on to the English blockade the responsibility for Belgium’s ruin.  Even a complete stoppage of trade could not have done the country as much harm as the German exactions in money only.  But the conquerors were not satisfied with fleecing the flock, they succeeded in robbing it of its food, in taking away its very means of life.

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Quite apart from any sentimental or moral reason, the last step was a grave mistake, even from the German point of view.  It would certainly have paid the Germans better in the end if they had allowed the Allies to send raw material to feed the Belgian factories, under the control of neutral powers, and if they had not requisitioned the machines and paralysed industry by the most absurd restrictions.  It would have been a most useful move from the point of view of propaganda, and, while posing as Belgium’s kind protectors, they might always have reaped the benefit through fresh taxes and new contributions.  If they have killed the goose rather than gather its golden eggs it is because they could not afford to wait.  It was one of these desperate measures, like the violation of Belgian neutrality, the ruthless use of Zeppelins and the sinking of the Lusitania, which did them more harm than good.  From the beginning Germany has fought with a bad conscience, prompted in all her actions more by the dread of being defeated than by the clear intention of winning the game.  The manifestation of such a spirit ought only to encourage her enemies; they are the sure signs of a future breakdown.  In the meantime, they must cause infinite torture to the unfortunate populations which are not yet delivered from her yoke.

During the first months of occupation the requisitions extended only to foodstuffs, cattle, horses, fodder, in short, to objects which could be used by the army.  They were out of all proportion to the resources of the country (Article 52 of the Hague Convention) and therefore absolutely illegal, but they could still be considered as military requisitions.  In a most interesting article published in Smoller’s Jahrbuch fuer Gesetzgebung Verwaltung und Volkswirtschaft, Professor Karl Ballod admits that the requisitions made in Belgium and Northern France have more than compensated for the harm caused by the Russian invasion of East Prussia.  Not only the army of occupation, but all the troops concentrated on the northern sectors of the Western front, “three million men,” have been fed by the conquered provinces.  Besides this, Germany took from Belgium, at the beginning of the war, “more than 400,000 tons of meal and at least one million tons of other foodstuffs.”