If this fact, in view of the above-cited large number of unemployed, in itself throws a sharp light on the economic troubles created in Belgium by unemployment, then the present condition must be characterized as wholly intolerable from a social standpoint if we picture to ourselves the consequences which the long continuing idleness produces for the laboring population. It is obvious that a trained laborer will lose his ability through long years of idleness, and his value to Belgian industry will therefore be seriously diminished. Even the unskilled laborer, who has been accustomed to a constant exertion of his strength, will be physically impaired by remaining unoccupied for a long time. In a moral way a continuance of present conditions will be absolutely devastating in its effects. The feeling of humiliation experienced by morally sound persons when they have to beg their living from foreign charity is, in the long run, entirely lost by the laboring classes and they cease to be proud of being able to support their families by their own efforts. The saying that idleness is the beginning of vice is verified to an enhanced degree in the case of the materially inclined Belgian laborer, and the consequences are drunkenness and moral degeneracy in wide circles of these classes of the population, among whom family life also incurs many dangers.

All these circumstances, as well as the gradual improverishment of the laborers' families, who are able to satisfy only the most necessary material needs after consuming all their savings, must inevitably involve a weakening of the whole power of the Belgian people.

Baron von Bissing, Governor General of Belgium, early realized the grave significance of this question to the population of the territory under his administration, and he consequently turned his whole attention to it from the beginning of his official activity. As far as the requirements of warfare permitted, he encouraged the revival of commerce and industry and favored every importation and exportation that was at all possible under the British blockade. He also exhorted the Belgian communal administrations to undertake emergency work that would be of utility to the general public, provided this would not cause any overburdening of the communal finances. The constantly increasing assistance to the unemployed has also been the subject of his unceasing solicitude, as he had long since recognized that such assistance would encourage aversion to work and thus enlarge the number of unemployed. He has therefore repeatedly instructed the authorities under him to see that the help afforded unemployed did not become an obstacle to their resumption of work, and he has also induced the heads of the assistance committees to act along the same lines.

By all these measures it was possible to limit, but by no means remove, the evil, for the reason that the deeper cause, the British

naval blockade, made its effects felt more and more as time went on. The Governor General was accordingly obliged, even last year, to resort to a more powerful means in order to counteract the increasing habit of idleness on the part of the people.

At the instance of shrewd Belgians, and with the coöperation. of the proper Belgian Ministry, he issued an order in August, 1915, against shirking of labor, which order was supplemented and strengthened in March of this year. These orders contemplate a compulsory removal to the places of work only when the laborer declines without sufficient grounds a job offered him at appropriate wages and within his capacity, and in this connection any ground of refusal based on international law is regarded as sufficient. workman can accordingly not be forced to participate in warlike enterprises. The orders are directed primarily against certain organized influences which wish to keep the laborers from voluntarily accepting remunerative work only because it was offered by Germans. They are founded on sound legislative considerations, which restrict the liberty of the individual in the interest of the general public.

A

The evil conditions which existed even at the time of issuance of these orders having in the course of time become entirely intolerable, the orders are now to be enforced more extensively than hitherto. Before they are applied, a proposition is made to the unemployed workman that he voluntarily enter into an advantageous labor contract, and only in case he stubbornly refuses (usually as a result of incitement) are forcible measures employed. The unemployed who go to Germany are placed on an equal footing there with the German laborers, and they receive higher wages than were ever known in Belgium. Care is taken to send part of these wages to the families remaining behind. The laborers are likewise allowed to carry on correspondence by letter with their families, and they are granted leave to go home at regular intervals. At their request they may even take their families with them to Germany. Provision is also made for religious service in their mother tongue.

The great advantages which accrue to Belgian laborers from the opportunity thus offered them to work, as compared with their previous sorry plight, are so obvious that for a year tens of thousands of them have been voluntarily availing themselves of the offer and have found remunerative labor in Germany. Happy to have escaped the misery caused by many months' idleness and the humiliation of public assistance, they have been able to restore their physical and moral strength by returning to their normal occupation. By the labor of their hands they can again raise their families up to a higher standard economically and make savings for the future. The temporary transplantation to another home does not frighten them, as Belgian laborers are used to wandering and have, in time

of peace, often hired out for work in the southern industrial section of the country or in Northern France for several months for the sake of a much less increase in wages than that now offered. The transfer of Belgian laborers to Germany therefore means a considerable improvement in the situation of these laborers and the abolition of conditions which have become intolerable.

Minister Whitlock to the Secretary of State.

[Extract.]

No. 491.]

AMERICAN LEGATION, Brussels, January 16, 1917.

SIR: In order fully to understand the situation it is necessary to go back to the autumn of 1914. At the time we were organizing the relief work the Comité National-the Belgian relief organization that collaborates with the Commission for Relief in Belgium-proposed an arrangement by which the Belgian Government should pay to its own employees left in Belgium, and other unemployed men besides, the wages they had been accustomed to receive. The Belgians wished to do this both for humanitarian and patriotic purposes; they wished to provide the unemployed with the means of livelihood, and, at the same time, to prevent their working for the Germans. The policy was adopted, and has been continued in practice, and on the rolls of the Comité National have been borne the names of hundreds of thousands-some 700,000, I believe of idle men receiving this dole, distributed through the communes.

The presence of these unemployed, however, was a constant temptation to German cupidity. Many times they sought to obtain the lists of the chomeurs, but were always foiled by the claim that under the guarantees covering the relief work, the records of the Comité National and its various suborganizations were immune. Rather than risk any interruption of the ravitaillement, for which, while loath to own any obligation to America, the Germans have always been grateful, since it has had the effect of keeping the population calm, the authorities never pressed the point other than with the Burgomasters of the Communes. Finally, however, the military party, always brutal, and with an astounding ignorance of public opinion

and of moral sentiment, determined to put these idle men to work. In August, von Hindenburg was appointed to the supreme command. He is said to have criticized von Bissing's policy as too mild; there was a quarrel; von Bissing went to Berlin to protest; threatened to resign, but did not. He returned, and a German official here said that Belgium would now be subject to a more terrible régime, would learn what war was. The prophecy has been vindicated. The deportations began in October in the Etape, at Ghent and at Bruges. The policy spread; the rich industrial districts of Hainaut, the mines and steelworks about Charleroi were next attacked; now they are seizing men in Brabant, even in Brussels, despite some indications and even predictions of the civil authorities that the policy was about to be abandoned.

During the last fortnight men have been impressed here in Brussels, but these seizures here are made evidently with much greater care than in the provinces, with more regard for the appearances. There was no public announcement of the intention to deport, but suddenly about ten days ago, certain men in town, whose names are on the lists of chomeurs, received summons, notifying them to report at one of the railway stations on a given day; penalties were fixed for failure to respond to the summons and there was printed on the card an offer of employment by the German Government either in Germany or Belgium. On the first day, out of about 1,500 men ordered to present themselves at the Gare du Midi, about 750 responded. These were examined by German physicians and 300 were taken. There was no disorder, a large force of mounted Uhlans keeping back the crowds and barring access to the station to all but those who had been summoned to appear. The Commission for Relief in Belgium had secured permission to give to each deported man a loaf of bread and some of the communes provided warm clothing for those who had none and in addition a small financial allowance. As by one of the ironies of life the winter has been more excessively cold than Belgium has ever known it and while many of those who presented themselves were adequately protected against the cold, many of them were without overcoats. The men shivering from cold and fear, the parting from weeping wives and children, the barriers of brutal Uhlans, all this made the scene a pitiable and distressing one.

It was understood that the seizures would continue here in Brus

sels, but on Thursday last, a bitter cold day, those that had been convoked were sent home without examination. It is supposed that the severe weather has moved the Germans to postpone the deportations.

The rage, the terror, and the despair excited by this measure all over Belgium were beyond anything we had witnessed since the day the Germans poured into Brussels. The delegates of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, returning to Brussels, told the most distressing stories of the scenes of cruelty and sorrow attending the seizures. And daily, hourly almost, since that time, appalling stories have been related by Belgians coming to the Legation. It is impossible for us to verify them, first because it is necessary for us to exercise all possible tact in dealing with the subject at all, and, secondly, because there is no means of communication between the Occupations Gabiet and Etappen Gabiet. Transportation everywhere in Belgium is difficult, the vicinal railways scarcely operating any more because of the lack of oil, while all the horses have been taken. The people who are forced to go from one village to another must do so on foot, or in vans drawn by the few miserable horses that are left. The wagons of the breweries, the one institution that the Germans have scrupulously respected, are hauled by oxen.

The well-known tendency of sensational reports to exaggerate themselves, especially in time of war, and in a situation like that existing here, with no newspapers to serve as a daily clearing house for all the rumors that are as avidly believed as they are eagerly repeated, should of course be considered, but even if a modicum of all that is told is true, there still remains enough to stamp this deed as one of the foulest that history records.

I am constantly in receipt of reports from all over Belgium that tend to bear out the stories one constantly hears of brutality and cruelty. A number of men sent back to Mons are said to be in a dying condition, many of them tubercular. At Malines and at Antwerp returned men have died, their friends asserting that they have been victims of neglect and cruelty, of cold, of exposure, of hunger.

I have had requests from the Burgomasters of ten communes from La Louvière, asking that permission be obtained to send to the deported men in Germany packages of food similar to those that are being sent to prisoners of war. Thus far the German Authorities