Collection: Books and Periodicals > Nevada County Historical Society Bulletins

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Title: Volume 072-3 - July 2018 Collection Type: Books and Periodicals Collection Name: Nevada County Historical Society Bulletins # of Pages: 6 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Date Scanned: 2019-08-01 06:46:52 OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.4.1 Item Sourced From: PDF First Created: 2025-03-17 04:06:33 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 04:06:33

Original Held At: Searls Historical Library Location: 161 Nevada City Hwy, Nevada City, CA 95959

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Humanitarians on the Home Front By Linda K. Jack A Gray, Grim Horde On Thursday, August 20, 1914 Brand Whitlock took his motorcar out into the center of Brussels to witness the German Army's entry into the city. An Ohio journalist and politician, Whitlock was the newly appointed minister of the American Legation of Belgium, stationed in the nation's capital. Appointed by President Woodrow Wilson just seven months earlier, Whitlock had expected a quiet and uneventful post that would allow ample time to write the literary novels to which he aspired.' The outbreak of war, however, would leave no time for literary pursuits. In reminiscing later about that fateful day Whitlock wrote: “And as we turned into the Boulevard Bischoffscheim there was the German army.. up and down the boulevard, under the spreading branches of the trees, as far as we could see, were undulating, glinting fields HIP SIVE TE BGAN BEES Forget Me Not by Josef Pierre Nuyttens (1885-1960), Publicity Department, Belgian Military Mission, [1917]. The child holds a bouquet of Forget Me Nots in her hand. Courtesy of the Library of Congress www. NevadaCountyHistory.org a ») THE NEVADA COUNTY Historical Society VOLUME 72 NUMBER 3 JULY 2018 < A of bayonets, and a gray, grim horde, a thing of steel, that came thundering on with shrill fifes and throbbing drums and clanging cymbals, nervous horses and lumbering guns and wild songs.”? Brussels was fortunate. It had been declared an open city, a status that would protect it from the destruction experienced by other Belgian cities since Germany's invasion on August 4". With an army of just 150,000 men, Belgium's King Albert I faced off against a German army of . million. The King fought to hold the Germans at bay long enough for his allies, France and England, to deploy their troops to Belgium's aid. By the end of August the German Army had taken the heavily fortified city of Liége, and reduced to rubble the cities of Visé, Dinant and Louvain. Although historians still debate the scope of the violence of the early weeks of the invasion, there is no doubt that they were characterized by a systematic program of destruction, executions of civilians and forced expulsions, which came to be known as the Rape of Belgium. The phrase would be used throughout the war by the Allied governments and newspapers as a propaganda trope to characterize the war as a fundamental battle between civilization and barbarism. A Ring of Steel One of the most highly industrialized and densely populated nations in Europe, Belgium imported 75% of the food needed to feed its 7.5 million people. The German Army confiscated much of the food that was available. The German government took the position that Germany had no legal or moral obligation to feed the civilian population. By September the staff of the American and Spanish Legations had begun working with civic organizations in Brussels to bring food into the city. The group grew increasingly alarmed that the situation would soon turn deadly for the entire country, for England's Royal Navy had plans to implement a full naval blockade of Belgian ports, which would include ships carrying food and other non-war materiel. The full blockade went into effect on November 14", effectively cutting off all external food supplies. NCHS Bulletin July 2018