The Commission For Relief In Belgium 11: When Thieves Fall Out

Despite the backing of the most powerful and influential men in Britain, France and America, the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB) frequently ran into both international and local squabbles which threatened to undermine its prime objective; to prolong the war by feeding both Belgium and the German army. Personal relationships, human frailty, including jealousy, and the lure of making even more from the rich pickings, motivated a greed which could well have back-fired in many different ways.

Rumblings at Westminster tended to be muted in the early stages of the war, but by 1916 more and more MPs voiced their concerns about the Relief programme. They asked questions about the total value in Belgium of the foodstuffs imported by the Neutral Relief Commission (another name for the CRB) and the amount of contributions made by the United States, by other neutrals, by the British Empire and by other allied governments. [1] Critics quickly became swamped by an avalanche of information that included the tonnage of foodstuffs, including bacon and lard being exported to Belgium. Lard was of particular interest because glycerine for high explosives could be extracted from it. Statistics were produced to show that in November 1914, 67 metric tons had been imported into Belgium and Northern France; in October 1915 this had risen to over 6,000 metric tons. [2] Parliamentary suspicions were entirely justified. Food was certainly flowing into the German ranks whether by the requisition of home grown products or resale of imports by unscrupulous Belgians but overwhelmingly by secret agreement between the CRB/CNSA and the German government. Baron von der Lancken’s official reports proved that without a doubt. [3]

On 21 January 1916 Lord Eustace Percy at the foreign office, wrote an alarming letter to Herbert Hoover about the volume of rice which had been stockpiled in Belgium by the CRB. He was ‘much disturbed’ to find that large quantities had been re-exported to Germany through Holland and been sold to the Germans ‘by the Relief Committee in Belgium’ [4] Emile Francqui assured Hoover that the matter had been investigated and that the ‘information’ from Lord Percy was exaggerated. Apparently it was the fault of a private German company which bought the food from a Belgian dealer who purchased the rice from ‘consumers’. Hoover’s problem was that while he had foreign office approval to import 5,000 tons of rice per month, between September and November around 34,000 tons had been landed, much more than double the agreed amount. Percy consequently threatened to ban the import of rice until the Germans handed over an equivalent amount from their own stock. Hoover’s response in February was firstly to rebut the statistics used by the foreign office and added that ‘some of the local committees, finding the fabulous price at which they could sell rice, have done so entirely in innocence of heart and have invested the money in potatoes….’ [5] It beggars belief.

In March 1916 Lord Percy wrote another detailed and worrying letter to Hoover. He had received reports from an ‘unusually trustworthy’ source that as much as half of the food imported by the Commission to the district of Ghent was going directly to the German army or being redirected to Breslau in Germany. Between November 1915 and January 1916, British sources claimed that seven boatloads of coffee, rice, beans, flour and oil nuts, some 4,200 tons in total had reached Germany through Holland. Lord Percy named one particular mill-owner in Brussels who was extracting oil from the milling process and selling it to the Germans ‘for munitions purposes’. [6] Hoover’s standard reply was to insist that the total leakage was very small and that the smuggling of overseas material through Holland was much greater than previously believed. [7] Deny, deflect and deceive were his watchwords, but constant complaints that the concession to the CRB was indeed feeding the enemy, gathered volume.

There is a further aspect to this that appears to have been scrupulously ignored. Belgians knew that the system was being abused by their own countrymen. At first the Comite National made little effort to monitor the day to day workings of the provincial committees but by December 1915 they had to acknowledge the ‘innumerable breakages of their instructions’ were leading to serious abuses which had caused adverse comment abroad. The CSNA conceded in their Report on general operations in 1915 that imported foodstuffs were not being exclusively sold in their appointed shops or being distinctively identified as relief produce, [8] which had been part of the basic agreement. In other words, his focus was limited to Belgians who were ignoring the rules and selling or reselling food to the Germans. By so doing, attention was drawn away from the greater scandal – Hoover’s faustian pact with the German government.

In Parliament, honourable members began to sharpen their questions especially when the German government of occupation began to use food provision as an inducement to encourage unemployed Belgians to work for them. ‘What action was the Government going to take in view of the admitted facts that the importation of foodstuffs by the Neutral Relief Commission makes Belgian products available for the Germans, and the distribution of these foodstuffs is being used as a means of obtaining forced labour in Belgium?’ [9] The answer from Lord Robert Cecil, Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs was curt. ‘I cannot agree that the alleged facts are admitted’. Later in the same debate he was asked if he knew the exact amount of proceeds from the sale of foodstuffs in Belgium. All he said was ‘No Sir, I cannot answer that without notice’. [10] The foreign office simply closed down discussion.

MPs were also rightly anxious about the volume of maize and other feeding stuffs imported into Holland (the inference being that such product was then re-exported to Germany) The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs assured them that ‘according to the Dutch statistics, only 2 tons of vegetable or animal oils’ had been exported to Germany that year. [11] Two tons. This was simply ridiculous. Time after time valid questions were answered with weak assurances or avoidance. Eventually, in August 1916, two years into the war, the blunt question was put;

‘Is his Majesty’s Government satisfied that the funds of the National Committee for Relief in Belgium are in fact devoted to the relief of loyal Belgians in the occupied territories, and not to that of Germans or of Belgians working for the German Army?’ [12]

Lord Robert Cecil’s reply was hardly convincing. He blustered on about ‘satisfactory guarantees covering all domestic foodstuffs’ but was obliged to concede that ‘violations of these guarantees by the Germans still arise’ although the ‘United States, Spanish and Netherlands Representatives at Brussels are taking energetic steps, [to stop this] and the Germans are well aware that a continuance of such violations will endanger the whole work.’ Was that a serious intention? Did assurances mean anything? He insisted that ‘His Majesty’s Government are satisfied that the foodstuffs imported by the Relief Commission run no risk of appropriation by the enemy.’ [13] Satisfied? He knew what was happening. The Foreign Office had evidence of the German appropriations, of railway trucks rolling from Holland to Germany, of the disappearance of food stocks, but of course admitted nothing. How could it, given the complicity of the Secret Elite?

There was a stock reply. ‘His Majesty’s Government have assisted the relief work in response to the wishes of the Allies, including the Belgian Government, and in the interests of the whole population.’ [14] If necessary, when challenged about the volume of imports into Belgium, the answer was tantamount to, ‘our figures very often do not agree with those published elsewhere.’ [15] The policy was being pursued despite loudly voiced complaint and problematic questions. And the Germans continued to feed their army and their civil population from the well-stocked nest that was occupied Belgium. In mid-November the CRB reported to the American Legation that ‘the Germans were shipping 3,000 head of cattle per week in to Germany, and much grease’. [16] This was not a leakage, it was a torrent behind which a desperate struggle for power was waged.

Tensions between the CRB and the Comite National in Brussels heightened in 1916. By that time the system had been more or less established and the Belgians felt that too much praise had been heaped on the Americans while their immense efforts often went unrecognised. They were jealous. A bitter battle of wills developed with Hoover and his right hand man, Hugh Gibson in one corner and Francqui and the Comite National in the other. It never bodes well when thieves fall out. The Belgian government in exile at Le Havre agreed to recognise the CNSA, or ‘Francqui and Company’ as Brand Whitlock sarcastically dubbed them, as its representative in Belgium, and in return Francqui ‘agreed to abdicate when the king returns’. [17] In the eyes of the head of the American Legation, ‘ Francqui assumed the power and rank of a dictator and has even told Hoover that the CNSA must be shown the respect due to a government.’ [18] While recognising that Whitlock was partisan, his outburst when Francqui declared that Belgium wanted no more charity from America and that the Americans were ‘invaders’, was classic. He found ‘the chicanery, the double-dealing, the black treachery of some participants’ to be so loathsome that words failed him. [19] Yet the world understood that the CRB and its Belgian arm, the CNSA, were as one, united to feed the needy and destitute of Belgium. It was no less than a global scam.

The stakes were enormous. The CNSA bankers were well aware that it was Hoover’s CRB which could cream off the profits from international transportation and trade in foodstuffs and gifts of clothing. They wanted their fair share.

Hoover had admitted to Whitlock in August 1916 that the CRB had accumulated a vast profit running into millions of dollars. He claimed to have suggested to Francqui that it should be used after the war to fund a scholarship for Belgian boys in American Universities and vice-versa. [20] The parallel with Cecil Rhodes and his Oxford University scholarships must have been music to Secret Elite ears.

In private, the name-calling was slanderous. Hoover called Francqui a ‘financial pirate’ and the CRB’s head of the Department of Inspection, Joseph Green, accused Francqui of leading a corrupt financial ring in Brussels, claiming that his dubious reputation ‘was known in financial circles on three continents’. [21] Note the clear emphasis on finance. When the squabbling was reduced to basics, it was all about money, power and control.

Hoover became further embroiled in a heated argument with the Belgian Government in exile when he presented them with an audited account for $65,000,000 which the CRB claimed to have spent to the end of 1915, money that had been channelled from the Allied borrowing in America to the Belgian government. Aloys van de Vyvere, the Belgian finance minister said that he would not finally discharge the claim until the government in exile returned to Brussels and could verify the data. To have automatically  approved Hoover’s accounts without careful scrutiny would have been a dereliction of duty. Herbert Hoover was outraged. His organisation was, in his view, answerable to no government and in a petulant memorandum to Walter Page, which he expected the Ambassador to sign, [22] he asserted that he had no legal liability to the Belgian government and the charitable gifts given to his organisation were his to dispose of as he saw fit. [23] Francqui and Hoover were both hewn from the same rotten elm. Their arrogance was unrestrained.

Both agencies, the CRB and the Comite National behaved like mobsters goading, name-calling and threatening dire consequences as they struggled to assert their domination over the same territory. But it was Hoover who had the protection of big brother. The Foreign Office laid down the law. Sir Edward Grey, recently ennobled as Lord Grey, ordained that the CRB must have undivided responsibility not just for the importation of food, but its distribution and use of the money raised from sales. [24] Lord Eustace Percy joined the attack by warning that British officials were of the opinion that the Comite National was not fulfilling its duty of inspection to ensure that the Germans did not abuse the importation of food. He was right. The Comite’s processes were corrupt and allowed widespread abuse.

Francqui ordered the Prosecuteurs du Roi to stop sending information to the CRB about charges brought against Belgian citizens for violating food regulations. Such reports had to be sent directly to his offices, and any request for information was to be routed through the CNSA. From August 1916 onwards, he entirely suppressed important cases and adjusted and amended official figures so that no-one could accurately measure the extent of Belgian malpractice in selling food to Germany. [25] By October, the CNSA had begun to replace American flags and bill-boards indicating ‘American Relief’ with their own banners at distribution centres. It may seem petty today but Ambassador Page in London was offended. He demanded that the message be clearly understood: ‘The Comite National is not the pivot upon which relief work revolves in Belgium.’ [26]

Every ounce of Secret Elite muscle was brought to bear on Francqui’s stance and by mid-December 1916 the Belgian government changed tack and agreed that the CRB should control the distribution of food in Belgium. Hoover won but Francqui was not cowed. He had to accept the British decision to back Hoover, but in doing so revealed his own ace card. He told the head of the American Legation that he had written a 600 page history of the Belgian Relief, and asked if Hoover ‘wished to risk being shown in his true colours in a book that will remain a standard history?’ [27] According to Brand Whitlock, Francqui added that ‘there is even a chapter on the role of the protective ministers’. Such an expose would have blown away more than Herbert Hoover. Unfortunately the promised book never saw the light of day. The quarrel was glossed over in a barely disguised stand-off, but relationships remained strained.

Thus the flow of food to Germany was protected, and the Secret Elite made clear their confidence in Herbert Hoover. Meanwhile, the real war continued.

[1] Hansard, House of Commons Debate, 10 July 1916 vol. 84 c7.
[2] Hansard, House of Commons Debate, 18 July 1916 vol. 84 c818.
[3] Micheal Amara et Hubert Roland, Gouverner en Belgique occupee, Oscar von der Lancken-Wakenitz – Rappports D’activite 1915-1918. pp 55- end.
[4] George Gay and HH Fisher, Public Relations for the Commission for Relief in Belgium, Percy to Hoover, 26 January 1916, Document 46, p. 79.
[5] Ibid., Document 48, pp. 80-81.
[6] Ibid., Document 49, pp. 81-82.
[7] Ibid., Document 50, pp. 82-83.
[8] Rapport General sur le functionement et les operations du Comite National de Secours et Alimentation, 1914-1919, p. 35.
[9] Hansard, House of Commons Debate, 20 July 16 vol. 84 cc1158-60.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Hansard, House of Commons, Debate, 27 July1916 Vol. 84 cc1841-2.
[12] Mr Evelyn Cecil MP, Hansard, House of Commons Debate, 10 August 1916 vol. 85. cc1201-2.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Hansard, House of Commons Debate, 23 Nov 1916, Vol. 87 cc1547-8.
[15] Hansard, House of Commons Debate, 31 Dec 1916, Vol. 88 cc1588-9.
[16] Brand Whitlock, The Letters and Journal,  Chapter VII, 17 November, 1916,
http://www.ourstory.info/library/2-ww1/Whitlock/bw07.html
[17] Whitlock, Letters and Journal, Chapter VII, 6 November 1916.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Whitlock, Letters and Journal, Chapter VII, 1 August 1916.
[21] George H. Nash, Herbert Hoover, The Humanitarian p. 219.
[22] Memorandum drafted to Walter Hines Page, 3 May, 1916.
[23] Nash and Fisher, Herbert Hoover, p. 204.
[24] Tracy B. Kittredge, The history of the Commission for the Relief in Belgium, 1914-1917, p. 364.
[25] Ibid., p. 371.
[26] Ibid., p. 374.
[27] Whitlock,  Letters and Journal, Chapter VII, 17, 6 November, 1916.

Edith Cavell 7: The Victim

In 1919 Edith Cavell’s body was disinterred from its unmarked grave in Brussels and given a formal memorial service in the Gard du Nord in the presence of the Allied Commanders. The coffin was loaded with all reverence onto a special train draped in black and covered with beautiful flowers. Her remains were met with great ceremony in England, and Queen Alexandra attended the military service at Westminster Abbey. Finally, Edith was laid to rest outside Norwich Cathedral with all the panoply of a grateful nation. [1] Let it be clearly understood that she was a patriot who willingly gave her life to save other brave men. Her self-sacrifice is beyond doubt and worthy of high honour. They called her a martyr, and amid the holy pomp and circumstance of the iconic cathedral, she was lauded in triumph. [2] On the other hand we now know that Edith was knowingly and unrepentantly a key figure in a Belgian resistance network which was spying for the allies and sending military intelligence to London. [3] Furthermore, she had a tale to tell.

And the deliberate myth-making, the manipulation of her contribution, contrived to deflect criticism away from the Commission for the Relief of Belgium (CRB) and the Comite National de Secours et Alimentation (CNSA) and the fact that through these organisations the allies were effectively feeding the German army. With the Cavell/de Croy organisation broken, the flow of adverse criticism from Belgium was somewhat stemmed. There would be no more compromising letters from the Berkendael Institute. The supply of food available to the German army continued; so too did the fighting. The British Foreign Office and War Office, the German Foreign Office and the elites who ordained the war, needed to sustain the flow of foodstuffs through Belgium. The CRB’s massive international organisation comprising bankers and financiers, shipping magnates and grain exporters could breathe more easily. So too could the Belgian bankers. The whistleblower had been silenced.

In addition there was an ironic bonus for the Secret Elite. With her body buried in an unmarked Belgian grave in 1915, the monsters of propaganda twisted Edith Cavell’s Christian values so that the protective Angel of Mercy was translated into an Avenging Angel. [4] The Bishop of London pronounced that ‘the blood of this brave woman will be the seed of armed men’ [5] Recruitment posters appeared with Edith’s image set against an emboldened background which proclaimed ‘Murdered by the Hun’. Sadly her example of selflessness was transformed into a rallying call for enlistment. Her life’s purpose had been to save others but her image was rebranded and distorted to send tens of thousands to their graves on the Western Front. A recent estimate claims that 40,000 more men, or somewhere between two and three infantry divisions were formed on the strength of the Cavell propaganda. [6] It was such perfect timing, for the flow of volunteers to Kitchener’s rallying call was fast drying up. Edith’s sacrifice smoothed the path to conscription in 1916. And it was all based on vile propaganda.

The British War Cabinet set up a secret committee under the Attorney-General in November 1918 to ‘Enquire into the Breaches of the Laws of War’ committed by the German army, and considered the case of Nurse Edith Cavell. In a report that was kept buried deep, the committee duly found that the court-martial (Feldgericht) was justified in finding that she had committed the offences of which she was charged, and had the power in law to condemn her to death. [7] In the cool reflection of a two-year old victory, the secret report of 26 February 1920 decided that; ‘it seems impossible to say that the tribunal which tried Miss Cavell, or the persons which carried out its sentence, were guilty of a war crime’ [8] and there was ‘no prospect that the prosecution of any of the persons concerned in the trial of Miss Cavell would result in a conviction.’ Having buried the truth, the Secret Elite had no interest in any further debate. So much for Lord Desart’s rhetoric of ‘tried in cold blood’. [9] Edith was a patriot, but she was guilty of the charge the Germans chose not to bring against her. Espionage.

Edith Cavell was certainly a victim of war, but whose victim?

Let us recap the main points raised over the course of our blogs. Nurse Cavell was a strong-minded, principled woman who, when war was declared, chose to return to her teaching post in Brussels. From August 1914 she became part of an underground network which was structured to aid and repatriate British, French and Belgian soldiers stranded behind enemy lines. The network, which was originally led by Prince Reginald de Croy, also spied on German trench positions, armaments stores, and general morale and passed information back to London.

Despite the ban on sending mail between Belgium and Britain, Edith was a regular correspondent, and defied German edicts by writing both to her family and the press. The image of Edith, bedecked in red-cross uniform, and tied to her office in Brussels suits the propagandists but evidence proves that she secretly met Marie de Croy in Ghent in April 1915. [10] She was very conscious of the dangers that surrounded the network, but would not abandon her involvement.

Senior officials close to the Secret Elite knew of her activities. At least two different departments of government in London, the Foreign Office and the War Office supported the de Croy network. British Intelligence was linked to Edith’s underground group through Harry Barton, and the French Intelligence service through Herman Capiau. [11] Who was running the show? Capiau named the ‘grand chef’, the controller of networks, as Dr. Bull, a person about whom little was known until his identity was confirmed in a recent BBC Radio broadcast. In the programme, Stella Rimington, formerly Director-General of MI5, named Dr Tollemache Bull as a senior British intelligence officer in charge of several spy networks. [12] According to a report in an American newspaper in 1922, Tollemache Bull was a dental physician who regularly met with Edith Cavell in Brussels during the war. [13] Bull was also related by marriage to the Whitlocks. (see Edith Cavell 3:) He was arrested and tried by the Germans in 1916 for providing Edith with funds and was defended by Maitre Braun. Not only did this British secret agent meet her regularly, but he was also channeling funds to her. [14] His cover was perfect. Who would have suspected a dentist as the link between several spy networks? This was not opportunistic or occasional espionage, but a carefully managed intelligence organisation that lead directly to London.

And Edith’s work delved into ever more clandestine activity. When the soldiers she had helped save landed back in Britain, they were extensively debriefed by intelligence officers from the War Office [15] before returning to their regiments. Many were inadvertently carrying secret messages sewn into their clothing, penned in microscopic handwriting. [16] Interestingly, Edith sewed her own diary, written in microscopic handwriting, into a cushion. Sadly only a fragment survived, [17] but it is surely instructive to realise that Edith used the art of miniature calligraphy herself. Was this one of the threads of her espionage?

The Americans also knew what was going on. By March 1915, her letters were routed through the American Legation in Brussels where they had every opportunity to read her mail. We know that her surviving letters became more openly incautious, [18] possibly because of the confidence she had misplaced in the diplomatic safety afforded by the Americans. Edith contributed her second report from Brussels for the Nursing Mirror, dated 29 March 1915. The editor, clearly annoyed that something had been removed, told his readers that the postmark on the envelope was 15 April, and that it had arrived at his offices four days later ‘torn open on both sides and resealed by the General Post Office.’ In other words he believed that he had not received everything that Edith had sent him. Having read and several times reread both the editor’s notes, placed on page one, and the anodyne article that followed, we cannot help but suspect that something much more controversial had been removed. What could Edith have written that upset British Intelligence? The article spoke of a very calm and unremarkable Brussels, far from the extreme alarm for a starving population which had been circulated by Hoover, Whitlock and the CRB. But given the knowledge she garnered from all of her underground contacts, the word her nurses heard on the street and what she saw for herself on her visits outside the capital, did she also write about the abuses of food being imported into Belgium through the CRB for the German army? It makes sense. Was it a question of what she wrote about Belgian Relief, or spoke about German food supplies to Dr Bull, that alarmed the Secret Elite in London? It may well have been both.

Herbert Hoover, as head of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, spent much of March and April fire-fighting the angry claims from Britain that the CRB was feeding the German army. He was most indignant at ‘the rumours in England of misuse of food supplies by Germans’ and the ‘severe drilling’ he had been given at the Foreign Office. [19] Unquestionably the War Office and British Intelligence knew precisely what was going on in Belgium, but not the general public. A strict embargo was placed on such information. Every soldier who made it back was not only debriefed but, under the Official Secrets Act, was strictly forbidden to tell anyone about their experiences. [20]

Hoover was in Brussels during Edith Cavell’s trial. He lunched with Brand Whitlock on 6 October and had discussions with Baron von der Lancken on the afternoon of 8 October. [21]  The Chairman of the CRB left the city on 9 October, the very Saturday on which the German Judges sat in secret session to decide the sentences of the military court [22] and only three days before Edith Cavell’s execution.

It may already be apparent to our regular readers that every aspect of Edith Cavell’s arrest, imprisonment and execution was framed by the CRB or its Belgian partner, the CNSA. All the received histories have built their accounts of Edith’s fate on ‘evidence’ presented by members of the American Legation who were associated with the CRB. Furthermore, this ‘evidence’ is still accepted as fact. Thus the lies continue.

And they grow darker. The German military governor who ordered that Edith be shot at dawn on 12 October 1915, General Traugott Martin von Sauberzweig, was a burly, aggressive brute of a man who endorsed violence as a tactic. [23] His stay in Brussels was so comparatively short that one can but conclude that he was specifically sent there on a mission. Sauberzweig was allegedly unknown to Brand Whitlock, who claimed never to have met him. On the day before Edith’s execution, Whitlock noted in his diary that von der Lancken ‘Finally telephoned the Military Governor, a new one, I must get his name…’ [24] We are asked to believe that the Head of the American Legation did not know the name of the recently appointed German military governor when so many Belgian citizens were being tried by a military court? Perhaps Whitlock’s memory had simply failed him once again. By 2 November, Sauberzweig was reported to have been removed from office and replaced, [25] but that may have been wishful thinking. Other sources claim that he held on to his post until June 1916. [26] Whichever, we believe that he was parachuted in as military governor to ensure that Edith Cavell was silenced.

How strange it all was, but no stranger than the later meeting that the cursed General apparently requested with Herbert Hoover and his CRB colleague, Vernon Kellogg, when they ‘happened to be in Berlin’ in August 1916. According to Hoover, Sauberzweig, haunted by remorse, [27] asked to speak with him and confessed that he had been responsible for having Edith Cavell shot before there was any time for an effective appeal. How convenient for Hoover and the CRB that Sauberzweig should accept full responsibility, referring to himself as ‘the murderer’. [28] Here for the historical record was their ‘proof’ that Cavell’s death had nothing to do with the CRB.

In his account, Vernon Kellogg painted a very different image of Sauberzweig’s remorse. He was drunk, ‘on his nth whisky’, and had just come from his son’s hospital bed where the young man was lying blinded and disfigured. ‘And the sight of his son – and the memory of Miss Cavell made him remark that this was a horrible war.’ [29] He repeatedly referred to ‘Die Cavell’; that ‘Die Cavell was a thing that interfered with German control of Belgium. It had to be got rid of, so I had her shot’. [30] Not much remorse there, no matter how you read it, but what did Sauberzweig mean by stating that Edith Cavell interfered with German control of Belgium? After his stay in Brussels, Sauberzweig was appointed Quartermaster-General at the Imperial German Supreme Headquarters. [31] Who better to understand the importance of the unfettered CRB supplies reaching his troops than the man responsible for feeding the German army?

No matter how it was dressed up in fraught meetings and bitter recriminations, the CRB’s relationship with the German war effort could only be described as collaboration. Anyone who endangered the status quo was indeed interfering with the war effort, but not just Germany’s. A sense of a multi-layered self-interest pervaded the Commission and its work. We believe that decisions were taken at the highest levels of real power which embraced America, Britain, France and Germany. Had the CRB collapsed, the American economy would have been immediately damaged. So much had been invested through the Morgan – Rothschild axis, the Kuhn, Loeb and Co. banking house, through Bethlehem Steel and America’s blossoming armaments industry, that any action which risked a sudden end to the war would have affected them all. Some writers have claimed that the decision to have Edith Cavell killed could be traced back to the British Head of the Secret Service in New York, Sir William Wiseman. Not so. Wiseman was recuperating in Britain from gas poisoning inflicted on him in Flanders earlier in 1915, and when he was posted to the United States in December, Edith Cavell had been dead for two months. [32] Never the less, the American connection was spread much further than Herbert Hoover and the Brussel’s Legation.

Nor should we imagine that British hands were clean. Though they never acknowledged Edith’s role as a spy (no government would) we have shown that she worked for the Intelligence Services. One hundred years later the former Director-General of MI5, Stella Rimington, admitted so in public. [33] Most of all, the Foreign Office in the personages of Sir Edward Grey and Lord Eustace Percy knew about the vast tonnage of food and thousands of livestock which were transferred into Germany while the CRB maintained its ‘humanitarian’ front. They knew the pressure that Hoover’s men were under to stop such information reaching London. This is a matter of record. [34] They were all in collusion.

On her way to prison in Germany, Princess Marie de Croy, sat on her cases in a railway station and inadvertently summed up this whole episode with a single observation.

‘The sergeant told me he was going on holiday and, like all the German soldiers whom I saw travelling, he was loaded with provisions to take home. Although a promise had been made to America that food should not be taken out of Belgium, which was the condition the United States had made for provisioning the population, this was certainly done.’ [35]

The Committee for Relief in Belgium was not supplying provisions for the sole use of the ‘starving’ Belgian population. It was feeding Germany too; feeding the German army and sustaining the German population. In dissecting the myriad of lies which have been woven around Edith Cavell, the conclusion we have come to is that the German, American, Belgian and British authorities colluded in her murder. Had she lived to expose the truth behind the CRB, the consequences for the Secret Elite would have been catastrophic. Her death ensured that the agony of a miserable war was prolonged.

[1] The Times, 16 May 1919 pp. 13-14.
[2] Ibid., p. 14.
[3] Phil Tomaselli, BBC History, September 2002, p. 6.
[4] Hugo Lueders, https://www.academia.edu/9532093/EDITH_S_WONDERLAND_IN_MEMORIAM_OF_EDITH_CAVELL_12_OCTOBER_1915#signup/close
[5] A G Gardner, The Guardian,  23 October 1915; quoted in Irene Cooper Willis, England’s Holy War, p. 231.
[6] Dame Stella Rimington, Secrets and Spies, BBC Radio 4, broadcast on 15/09/2015. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b069wth6
[7] National Archives, PRO/CP 1813, p. 424.
[8] Ibid., p. 428.
[9] Hansard, House of Lords Debate, 20 October 1915, vol. 19 cc. 1100-1104.
[10] Again we are indebted to Hugo Lueders, an independent policy analyst in Brussels for advice and up to the moment research he is undertaking.
[11] See blog Edith Cavell 3: The Constant Threat.
[12] Rimington, Secrets and Spies, BBC Radio 4, broadcast 15/09/2015.
[13] The Batavia Times, April 22, 1922. http://fultonhistory.com/newspaper%2010/Batavia%20NY%20Times/Batavia%20NY%20Times%201921-1925%20Grayscale/Batavia%20NY%20Times%201921-1925%20Grayscale%20-%200555.pdf
[14] http://whitlockfamilyassociation.com.s3.amazonaws.com/sources/newspapers/NP0261.pdf
[15] Harry Beaumont, Old Contemptible, p. 187.
[16] Rimington, Secrets and Spies, BBC Radio 4, broadcast 15/09/2015.
[17] Diana Souhami, Edith Cavell, p. 229.
[18] Ibid., p. 248.
[19] George Gay and HH Fisher, Public Relations of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, Document 33, page 52.
[20] Beaumont, Old Contemptible, pp. 187-8.
[21] Brand Whitlock, The Letters and Journals of Brand Whitlock, Chapter V,  6-9 October 1915.
[22] Souhami, Edith Cavell, p. 346.
[23] Ibid., p. 320.
[24] Whitlock, The Letters and Journals, Chapter 5, 11 October 1915.
http://www.ourstory.info/library/2-ww1/Whitlock/bw05.html
[25] New York Times, 2 November 1915.
[26] Sophie Schaepdrijver, Gabriel Petit, The Death and Life of a Female Spy, p. 92.
[27] Brand Whitlock, Belgium Under German Occupation, p. 198.
[28] Ibid.
[29] Vernon Kellogg, Fighting Starvation, p. 66.
[30] Ibid.
[31] Schaepdrijver, Gabriel Petit, p. 92.
[32] The Times, 18 June 1962, p.14;  Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, Sir William Wiseman, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; Christopher Andrews, Secret Service, The Making of the British Intelligence Service, p. 209.
[33] Rimington, Secrets and Spies, BBC Radio 4, broadcast 15/09/2015.
[34] George Gay and HH Fisher, Public Relations of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, Documents, 46-50 pp. 79-84.
[35] Marie de Croy, War Memories, p. 204.

Edith Cavell 5: The Circus Of Denials

Of the 70 people initially arrested by the German secret police, 35 were tried together in the Senate House in Brussels on 7th and 8th October 1915. The 22 men and 13 women were charged with a variety of related crimes including, conveying soldiers to the enemy, assisting with their safe-keeping, circulating seditious pamphlets and illegally carrying letters and correspondence. [1] It was a closed trial, and neutral observers were not permitted to attend. The five German judges were unnamed, but the central prosecutor, Kriegsgerichtsrat Eduard Stoebar, had allegedly been ‘brought to Brussels especially for this case as he was known as a hanging judge’. [2]

Edith pled guilty to the charge laid against her, namely aiding enemy soldiers to return to their homeland and was not questioned about her other activities. The precise nature of the charge under paragraph 68 of the German military penal code included ‘conducting soldiers to the enemy’ which carried the death sentence, [3] though no-one apparently expected it to go that far. We know that she was a prolific correspondent, and the Germans had in their possession a letter that had been recently delivered to her through the American Legation, but though she was clearly in possession of illegal correspondence, Edith was not accused of illegally sending or receiving mail. What embarrassment would that letter have caused had it been produced in court? Yet no reference was made to it at all. Why? It has been suggested that in her plea of guilty, she took the opportunity ‘to conceal greater and more serious activities, including spying’. [4]

While that is an interesting way of suggesting that Edith somehow set the parameters of the charges she faced, the responsibility for framing the trial lay entirely with the German court. The pertinent question would ask why she was not interrogated about the content of the letters she had sent or the frequency of such correspondence? She was known to be an honest, frank, God-fearing woman who would not have lied under oath. Had she been asked, would Edith have spoken out about the German use of the food imports facilitated through the CRB? Was this what she meant when she told her mother that she ‘could tell you many things, but must save them till later?’ [5] Could the Germans or the Commission for Relief in Belgium have afforded to take that risk?

Edith was not the only non-Belgian, nor even the only English woman on trial. The highest profile female prisoner, Princess Marie de Croy, was born in London, a fact recorded on her charge sheet, and made known to the court. [6] If the purpose of the exercise was to frighten or subdue the population and stop the repatriation of refugee soldiers, then the execution of that noblewomen alone would have sufficed. She was both English and of Belgian aristocracy. Her brother was held to be the leader of the underground movement. But they spared Marie de Croy and executed the English nurse and one unlucky other, Philippe Baucq, the man responsible for La Libre Belgique which had lampooned General von Bissing. The Spanish Ambassador, the King of Spain [7] and even Pope Benedict XV became involved in international pleas for mercy. The remaining members of the network who were condemned to death with Edith had their sentences remitted to imprisonment with hard labour. Only  Edith and Philippe Baucq were summarily shot by firing squad. Members of the CRB, the American Legation and the CSNA would have us believe that they did everything humanly possible to save Edith Cavell. Judge that for yourself, please.

Brand Whitlock was unwell and kept himself out of the action. He did however know about Edith Cavell’s dire circumstances. In his journal, Whitlock casually recorded on 11 October, ‘I don’t remember whether I mentioned her in my notes before of not. She was arrested weeks ago….’ [8] He could not remember whether he had mentioned her before? Amazing. Apart from the convenience of poor recall, Whitlock was admitting prior interest in Edith’s fate, though nothing about her was included in his earlier diaries or journals. However, at the eleventh hour, he sprang into action. If the accounts from Hugh Gibson and Gaston de Leval are to be believed, and these are the sources from which historians have drawn their conclusions, the charade of last minute pleadings went as follows.

Whitlock records that he was brought news of Edith’s death sentence at 9.00 pm on 11 October by his friend and confidante, de Leval who had ‘just heard from the nurses who were keeping him informed…that the sentence of death had been pronounced on Miss Cavell at two o’clock that afternoon and that she was to be shot next morning.’ [9]. In his later account, Belgium Under German Occupation, Whitlock altered the timing to read, ‘the sentence of death had been pronounced on Miss Cavell at half-past four in the afternoon and she was to be shot at two o’clock the next morning.’ [10]

Perhaps he just wanted to heighten the tension. There is a further point. No-one has ever explained how these nurses knew what was happening, yet the most influential men in the land apparently did not. But that is not all. With divine prescience or, more likely, in the expectation of such news, Brand Whitlock, on the advice of Maitre Gaston de Level, had that very afternoon signed a plea for clemency to the Governor General (von Bissing) and a ‘letter of transmittal’ to be given to the head of the German Political Department,  Baron von der Lancken. Whitlock described it as a ‘premonition’ [11] They claimed not to know about the court’s verdict, but had prepared letters of appeal in advance. What amazing foresight.

As the circus gathered, key figures could not be found. General von Bissing was at his chateaux at Trois Fontaine, apparently playing bridge. Hugh Gibson and Gaston de Leval found the Spanish Ambassador, Marquis de Villalobar at Baron Lambert’s house in the company of the most powerful banker in Belgium and the executive president of the CNSA, Emile Francqui. Happily the meal was not greatly ruined since they were already at coffee. All, save Francqui, rushed round to Baron von der Lancken’s empty offices at Rue Lambermont, only to be told he was at ‘Le Bois Sacre’, a seedy variety theatre. [12] Von der Lancken insisted on waiting until the end of the performance. He dismissed claims of Edith’s impending execution as ‘impossible’, but was prevailed upon to phone the prison. He claimed that it was only at that point that he learned Edith was indeed to be executed in the dark of night. Or so the story was written by the Americans. Let us recap here. Von der Lancken claimed not to have known about the decision to shoot Edith Cavell and Philippe Baucq. Von Bissing was at his chateaux playing cards. The most important figure in Belgian politics and finance, Emile Francqui chose to remain at his friend’s house and finish his coffee while the others rushed about like headless chickens. At what point did coincidence collide with convenience and mutate into fiction?

While Hugh Gibson, de Leval and the Marquis de Villalobar appealed for clemency or at worst, the postponement of the death sentence, a different round of buck-passing began. Baron von der Lancken claimed that von Bissing, though Governor-General, had no power to over-rule the new Military Governor, General von Sauberzweig, on matters decided by a military court, and it was up to him to grant a stay of execution. Von Sauberzweig refused. He had been appointed only days before, and his temporary stay in Brussels raises questions which will be considered in a future blog. Interestingly he later became quarter-master for the German army, which suggests that von Sauberzweig had more than a passing interest in the work of the CRB.

The token appeals for clemency were dismissed about midnight and, according to Hugh Gibson, two hours later Edith Cavell faced the firing squad. [13] The phrase ‘you couldn’t make it up’ summarises Gibson’s account. Edith was executed at dawn on 12 October 1915, in the company of another hero, Philippe Baucq. In her last hours with the British chaplain, the Reverend H Stirling Gahan, she calmly reflected: ‘I have seen death so often that it is not strange or fearful to me.’ [14] She died as she lived, a heroine and a patriot … and a key member of a successful underground network working against the German invaders.

Spies were regularly shot and it was not unknown for women spies to suffer the same fate. The French authorities had executed Marguerite Schmidt and Ottillie Voss for spying in March and in May 1915, [15] but Edith Cavell had not been charged with espionage. Though she was later referred to as the ‘Spy Cavell’ by the German authorities, no-one appeared to have expected that the military court would pass the death sentence even though warnings about the consequences of harbouring enemy soldiers had been widely posted across Brussels. Spies were shot, yes; smuggling soldiers across the border was cause for imprisonment. Not this time.

The German Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Arthur Zimmerman, issued a formal press release from Berlin about Edith Cavell’s execution. It stated: ‘no war court in the world could have given any other verdict, for it was not concerned with a single emotional need of one person, but a well thought out plot, with many far-reaching ramifications, which for nine months succeeded in doing valuable service to our enemies to the great detriment of our armies.’ [16]

This claim was perfectly fair. He added that her execution was regrettable but necessary and just, because as a result of the underground activities, ‘countless Belgian, French and English soldiers are again fighting in the ranks of the allies’ thanks to the group ‘whose head was the Cavell woman.’ [17] The German authorities in Belgium knew that Edith Cavell was not in charge of the network. Von Bissing, wrote a letter to his cousin on 23 October 1915 in which he categorically stated that ‘the brother of the princess (Reginald de Croy) was the leader of the organisation and, if arrested, would undoubtedly have been condemned to death.’ [18] So the Germans knew that Edith Cavell was directly involved but not the leader of the organisation. Did the German Under-Secretary lie, or was he not made party to all the facts?

Governor General von Bissing was not interested in clemency. Marie de Croy thought that she saw him sitting amongst other officers in the Royal Box in the Senate House during the first day of the trial, ‘but later it was announced that he was out of Brussels at the time’ [19] What a strange denial. Why would the German authorities need to distance the General from the trial? Unless of course his complicity goes far deeper than historians have recorded. And of what were they so scared that they sentenced Edith to death in camera, and carried out the sentence almost immediately? These are questions on which we should ponder, for the consequence of Edith Cavell’s execution was far reaching. It stirred violent emotion and the cycle of blame was rapidly twisted into a whirlwind of propaganda, lies, and contempt for Germany, much of which is being repeated as truth in the current centenary commemorations.

Now, as then, there is a darker purpose. Edith’s death deflected attention away from the CRB and its role in feeding the German army. A role which Belgian historians seem determined to suppress.

[1] Diana Souhami, Edith Cavell, p. 325.
[2] Marie de Croy, War Memories, p. 176.
[3] Brand Whitlock, Belgium Under German Occupation, Vol. 2, p. 11.
[4] Katie Pickles, Transnational Outrage – The Death and Commemoration of Edith Cavel, p. 29.
[5] Souhami, Edith Cavell, p. 249.
[6] Marie de Croy, War Memories, p. 179.
[7] Ibid., p.190.
[8] Brand Whitlock, Letters and Journals, 11 October, 1915. http://www.ourstory.info/library/2-ww1/Whitlock/bw05.html
[9] Ibid.
[10] Whitlock, Belgium under the German Occupation, vol. 2., p 15.
archive.org/stream/belgiumundergerm02whit#page/68/mode/2up/search/edith+cavell
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid., p 19.
[13] Hugh Gibson, ‘A Journal from our Legation in Belgium’.
[14] firstworldwar.com Primary Documents – The Rev H. Stirling Gahan on the execution of Edith Cavell. Source Records of the Great War, Vol. III, ed. Charles F. Horne, National Alumni 1923.
[15] Exchange Telegraph, Paris, November 2, 1915.
[16] firstworldwar.com – Primary Documents – Alfred Zimmern on the execution of Edith Cavell
[17] Ibid.
[18] Marie de Croy, War Memories, p. 165.
[19] Ibid., p. 176.

Edith Cavell 4: The Constant Lies

Edith Cavell was arrested in her office at the Berkendael Institute in Brussels on Thursday 5 August 1915. [1]

In his self-serving memoirs, Hugh Gibson, first secretary to the American Legation in Brussels and close friend of Herbert Hoover, claimed that Edith was ‘quietly arrested’ and that ‘it was some time’ before the news reached the Legation. [2] That is simply untrue. Edith was escorted from her office by Otto Mayer, head of the German Secret Police, and her distraught nursing staff witnessed the deed. She had expected to be arrested. Her associates in the underground network, Louise Thuliez and Philippe Baucq, had been taken into custody on Saturday 31 July and news of their fate spread fast. Realising that the whole network had been compromised, Reginald de Croy rushed to Brussels to warn Edith, and other members of the group to destroy all evidence. This was no quiet affair. For a start, Edith was just one of seventy initially imprisoned of whom thirty-five were charged with harbouring soldiers and conducting them back to the enemy. [3] Marie de Croy’s arrest followed soon afterwards, but to the chagrin of the German authorities her brother Reginald, Prince de Croy, escaped their clutches. To claim that the arrest and imprisonment of such distinguished people went unnoticed by members of the CRB is utterly ridiculous.

Edith was first held in a communal women’s cell in Brussel’s main police station at the Kommandantur, opposite the Royal Park, and held there for two days until she was transferred across the city to the harsher quarters of  St Gilles prison. Hugh Gibson’s claim that he did not know about Edith Cavell’s arrest becomes even more preposterous when weighed against the fact that she was initially incarcerated barely one street away from Hoover’s headquarters. At the end of December 1914, Herbert Hoover had moved his commission’s offices from 48, Rue de Naples to take possession of three floors of the magnificent Societe Generale building at 66, Rues de Colonies. [4] It had formerly served as the headquarters of the Banque Belge pour L’Etranger and comprised a glorious sweep of imperial grandeur on the hill leading to the Kommandantur. They were virtually neighbours, barely 200 yards apart.

From the very beginning, everyone officially associated with the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB) denied knowledge of what was happening. Given that the de Croy’s network had close ties to the Americans, [5] that when arrested, Edith had in her possession a letter sent through the American Legation [6] and the general stir caused by the flurry of arrests, it is simply incredible that Hugh Gibson and his colleagues did not know what was happening around them. But that was their claim; a claim accepted without demur by the British government. It formed the basis of their justification for being unable to take steps with sufficient speed to save Edith Cavell.

What unfolded was no less that a macabre pantomime in which all of the key players who might have influenced the Germans managed to delay their intervention sufficiently long enough to ensure that Edith could not be saved from her fate. The American Legation had accepted international responsibility for all British citizens in Belgium after the German occupation and thus had a legal duty of care for Edith Cavell. The senior diplomat responsible for her safety, and head of the American Legation, Brand Whitlock, ‘was ill in his bed at this time’. [7] His role was assumed by Hoover’s loyal agent at the Legation, the aforementioned Hugh Gibson. He had been a member of the CRB in Brussels from October 1914.

A formal letter from Maitre Gaston de Leval, the Belgian legal advisor who had worked for the Americans for many years, was sent to Brand Whitlock, the chief of the United States Legation, on 12 October 1915, the day Edith was executed. It claimed: ‘As soon as the Legation received an intimation that Miss Cavell was arrested, your letter of August 31st was sent to Baron von der Lancken’ [8] (who was in charge of German political department in Brussels.) De Leval clearly felt it necessary to send a formal letter to his friend and employer, Whitlock, to have it appear on the record that the American legation did not hear of Edith’s arrest until more than three weeks after the event. The immediate American reaction to her execution was to cover their own backs.  The letter served to excuse, retrospectively, their studied inaction.

Others, on the other hand, immediately tried to have Edith released. The loyal nurses who witnessed her arrest rushed to the Kommandantur but were subjected to ridicule by the guards. On 10 August they learned that Edith had been transferred to the prison at St Gilles and  turned to the one friend  ‘in whom we could confide or from whom we could ask information’, Maitre van Alteren. He was the lawyer who represented the governors of the Nursing School and he agreed to plead her cause with the military authorities. Van Alteren was promptly arrested and imprisoned. [9] The medical confraternity in Brussels knew of Edith’s arrest, as did the governors of the Nursing School, but de Leval alleged that the American Legation knew nothing  for almost a month.

Consider the implication of the timing of these events. Edith Cavell had been arrested on 5 August in plain daylight, yet the Legation, itself fully aware of the de Croy network, claimed not to have known for 26 days. This is not just unlikely, it is impossible. Networks by their very essence, connect, and breaks to the connection become immediately apparent. Edith’s own family in England were notified by a Dutch source that she had been imprisoned. They even knew that the date of her arrest was 5 August. Having heard no more than that, her brother-in-law, Dr Longworth Wainwright wrote directly to Sir Edward Grey at the foreign office on 24 August. The British Foreign Secretary, Grey, formally asked Walter Page, the American Ambassador in London to investigate what had happened in Brussels. [10] Page cabled Brand Whitlock on 27 August, yet the official record later released by the Foreign Office and published in great detail in The Times [11] would have us believe that it was 31 August before the American legation knew about the arrest and contacted the German authorities. Hugh Gibson’s published journal clearly claimed that that was the case. Again, it was an outrageous lie.

It beggars belief that it took the Legation a further ten days before their lawyer, Maitre de Leval, officially requested permission to visit Edith Cavell in prison. Two days later, according to him, the German authorities refused. [12] Edith’s legal representation was an orchestrated farce. De Leval neither met with her nor represented her, though ‘history’ was to claim otherwise. As ever, when the Secret Elite bury their involvement, facts and circumstances become mired in confusion. So it was with Edith’s legal representation.  While it was the duty of the American Legation to represent  British citizens in Belgium who might be in trouble, for some unfathomable reason in Edith’s case that duty was assumed by Emile Francqui’s Comite Nationale de Secours et Alimentation (CNSA). One of its senior committee members, Eugene Hanssens, agreed to defend her. [13]

However, since he was a constitutional lawyer, Hanssens had no accreditation to plead before a military tribunal. He in turn chose as his substitute, Thomas Braun of the CNSA. [14] Braun hailed from a distinguished legal family and his father, himself an eminent lawyer, had been appointed to represent Princess Marie de Croy. The crucial point to note is that Hanssens and Braun were senior members of the CNSA and can be identified in the Belgian war-time records of the Comite National in session.  [15] Despite the claims of ignorance made by the Americans and their paid counsellor, the men from the CNSA with whom they met on a regular, often daily basis, had put together a legal team to represent the de Croy/Cavell network. The men with whom they shared responsibility for the daily disbursement of foodstuffs had stepped forward to protect the captive network … including Edith Cavell.

Matters became mystifyingly convoluted. According to the documents and letters released by Brand Whitlock, when the Legation wrote to Baron von der Lancken for clarification about Edith Cavell on 31 August, [16] it was informed that the legal representation for Miss Edith Cavell was in the hands of Advocate Braun, who ‘has already been in touch with the competent German authorities’. This official reply from von der Lancken was written on 12 September, [17] but there was a fatal and worrying flaw to his claim. ‘Advocate’ Braun had previously been removed from the case. Braun had received a letter from the German government of occupation dated 1 September, 1915 accusing him of improper behaviour in defaming them in court, being incapable of objectivity and of using his position to his own political advantage. [18] As of 1 September, Thomas Braun was banned from representing anyone, by order of the German Military. Yet Whitlock could produce a letter from von der Lancken dated ten days later, which claimed that Edith’s case was being represented by Braun, her appointed lawyer. Either one or both were lying.

Thus at a stroke, in a crucial twenty-four hour period between 31 August and 1 September, Edith Cavell was cut off from any representation associated directly with the Commission for Relief in Belgium. Once the American Legation was obliged to admit that they knew about Edith’s arrest, the Germans banned Thomas Braun from the case. Was this an act of collusion? These had been trying months for Hoover. His negotiations with London and Berlin to keep the funds flowing and the food pouring into Rotterdam, despite the  mounting allegations in Britain that the Germans were greatly benefitting from it, had been fraught with dangerous allegations in newspapers. We have already established Edith’s links to both the press and the War Office in London. Furthermore, the threats  she made in her letters that she had damning information which would one day be made public [19] would have caused great concern, assuming that more than just her family read her mail. We have to ask whether the timing was chance or were the Germans asked to extricate the CRB/CNSA from any responsibility for Edith’s fate? Suddenly, no-one even loosely associated with Herbert Hoover was directly involved in attempting to save her.

Next in line for this poisoned chalice was an established member of the Brussels’ Bar, Maitre Sadi Kirschen, who was approached by both Hanssens and Braun on 7 September. [20.] Kristen was not involved with the CNSA. Sadi Kirschen wrote to ask Edith if she would accept him as her defence replacement, but his letter never reached her. Furthermore, the Germans decided to deny Maitre Kirschen access to Edith immediately before the trial [21] and he was not given sight of the prosecution’s evidence. Sadi Kirschen discussed the case with his legal colleagues, and the unanimous opinion was that the worst she might expect was five or so years in prison. [22]

In his later report, which was no better than a litany of excuses, Gaston de Leval made great play of his willingness to attend the trial in person and of being advised not to do so by Mr Kirschen lest the Germans be affronted by his presence.  Apparently de Leval’s attendance might have prejudiced Edith’s case! What a bizarre excuse. Every sentence in de Leval’s Report was written to absolve himself, the Americans and key figures of the CRB from responsibility or complicity. [23]

Why did the Americans go to such lengths to protect themselves but not Edith? Their constant denials begin to grate. By wrapping themselves around their own supposedly legal statement which was rapidly published by the British government, repeated in Gibson’s diary and apparently ‘authenticated’ by Brand Whitlock, these men wrote their own version of history; a version that goes uncontested, even although it is ridiculous. Their story became even more ridiculous.

In Brand Whitlock’s second volume about his years in Belgium, written in 1919, he opened his account of Edith Cavell’s tragic betrayal with the following words: ‘Early in August Brussels had heard, and all Belgium – or at least all that part of Belgium that lived in chateaux – had heard that Princess Marie de Croy and the Countess of Belleville had been arrested.’ [24] While concentrating on the Belgian noblewomen, he mentioned ‘Mademoiselle Thuliez, and certain others’ and claimed that the Princess did not know what became of the allied soldiers they were protecting ‘after they reached Brussels.’ Then with carefully chosen words, he stated: ‘One day in August it was learned at the Legation that an English nurse named Edith Cavell had been arrested.’ [25] To coin a phrase, this was utter drivel, a blatant attempt to misrepresent events to cover his back.

By relegating his knowledge of her predicament until ‘One day in August’ Whitlock sought to alter history so that he could acknowledge that ‘all Belgium’ knew about the aristocrats and the demise of the underground network, yet distance himself from the responsibility he held for Edith Cavell. That it was the twenty-seventh day apparently slipped his mind. The lies simply got ever more ridiculous. His bold claim that Marie de Croy knew nothing about the fate of these soldiers once they reached Brussels is absurd. Princess Marie de Croy wrote a precisely detailed book when she returned from captivity, in which she detailed the underground work overseen by her brother Reginald.  This included her visit to Edith and and his admiration for her dedication. [26] Recent evidence doggedly researched by Hugo Lueders and his associate in Brussels has unearthed proof that Edith Cavell and Marie de Croy met together in Ghent in April 1915 at La Ville D’ Audenarde. Edith Cavell stayed several times at the guest-house, known to be an important hub for members of the Belgian and French resistance movements as well as profiteers associated with the relief movement. [27] Marie knew what she was talking about.

Whitlock didn’t  …

Marie de Croy’s autobiographical account of the trial added yet another twist to the tale. She was represented by Alexander Braun whose services had been employed by her many influential friends in Brussels, but she specifically identified his son, Thomas Braun as part of the defence team for all the accused.  He led the final defence summary  ‘with a fine appeal’  pleading that the Belgian defendants had been faced with the choice between helping their countrymen or denouncing them. [28] Thus Thomas had been removed from representing Edith, but retained as a leading player in the defence team. This astounding piece of evidence lends credence to the fact that the CRB wanted Edith’s defence distanced from their associates.

Let this blog end on a very worrying note. Maitre Gaston Leval’s report on the Execution of Edith Cavell is currently being presented on the net by firstworldwar.com as a Primary Document for readers, schools and universities. It is little more than a bundle of misleading, self-serving assertions that do not stand up to scrutiny.  It is part of the propaganda to which the British government was happy to accede in 1915. One hundred years later, it is still presented as the truth.

[1] Diana Souhami, Edith Cavell, p. 271.
[2] Project Gutenberg, A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium, by Hugh Gibson, The Case of Miss Edith Cavell. http://net.lib.byu.edu/estu/wwi/memoir/legation/Gibson8.htm
[3] First World War Primary Documents, Maitre Gaston de Leval on the Execution of Edith Cavell  http://www.firstworldwar.com/source/cavell_deleval.htm
[4] Tracey Kittredge, The history of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, p. 97.
[5] Harry Beaumont, Old Contemptible, pp. 173-4.
[6] Souhami, Edith Cavell, p. 271.
[7] Princess Marie de Croy, War Memories, p.192. https://archive.org/details/warmemories00croyuoft
[8] Charles F. Horne, Source Records of the Great War, Vol. III, ed., National Alumni, 1923. firstworldwar.com – Primary Documents – Maitre G. de Level on the Execution of Edith Cavell.
[9] Jacqueline Van Til, With Edith Cavell in Belgium, pp.125-131. https://archive.org/details/withedithcavelli00vant%5D
[10] Souhami, Edith Cavell, p. 313.
[11] The Times, Friday 22 October 1915, p. 9.
[12] First World War.com – Primary Documents – Hugh Gibson on the Execution of Edith Cavell
[13] John Hamill, The Strange Career of Mr. Hoover, Under Two Flags, p. 333.
[14] Charles Tytgat, Nos Fusilles (raconteurs et espions) p. 67. http://www.bel-memorial.org
[15] La Belgique et la guerre. Georges Rancy Edition Henri Bertels 1927 http//www.1914-1918.be/photo.php?image=photos2/president hoover/president hoover 006.jpg
[16] Brand Whitlock to von Der Lancken, 31 August 1915 as quoted in Brand Whitlock, Belgium Under the German Occupation vol. 2, p. 4.
[17] Baron von Der Lancken to Mr Whitlock, 12 September, 1915 as quoted in Brand Whitlock, Belgium Under the German Occupation Vol. 2, p. 5.
[18] Tytgat, Nos Fusilles, pp. 68-69
[19] See previous blog: Edith Cavell 3: The Constant Correspondent.
[20] Sadi Kirschen,  Devant les Conseils de Guerre Allemands, p. 54.
[21] ibid., p. 136.
[22] Kirschen, Devant les Conseils de Guerre Allemands, p. 55.
[23] firstworldwar.com – Primary Documents, Maitre G. de Leval on the execution of Edith Cavell, 12 October 1915.
[24] Brand Whitlock, Belgium Under German Occupation, vol. 2, p. 2. http://www.firstworldwar.com/source/cavell_deleval.htm
[25] Ibid., p. 3.
[26]  Marie de Croy, War Memories, pp. 127-8. https://archive.org/details/warmemories00croyuoft
[27] Antoine Redier, La Guerre des Femmes, Histoire de Louise de Bettignes et de ses compagnes, p. 30.
[28] Ibid., p. 186.

Edith Cavell 3: The Constant Threat

The German secret police became increasingly suspicious of the de Croy organisation and they in turn became aware of this. As 1915 wore on, it was evident that the police were watching them and their safe houses. In April of that year they met secretly in Ghent. Both Marie de Croy and Edith Cavell suffered the indignity of having their homes searched and realised the great danger they were facing. Marie wanted to close down the network, but Edith would not take her advice, insisting that ‘if one of these men got caught and shot, it would be our fault’. [1] A compromise was agreed whereby no more allied soldiers would be sent to her clinic, but Edith would continue to organise and direct the guides who ran the escape routes to Holland. It was too late.

Inevitably, traps were set and, betrayed by a collaborator, Gaston Quien, most of the members of the network were apprehended. In all, the secret police arrested 70 suspects in a wide sweep around Brussels and the surrounding area. [2] The first to be apprehended were Phillipe Baucq and Louise Thuliez.  Baucq was an architect and committed patriot who printed and disseminated free newspapers which carried anti-German stories. His clandestine news sheet, La Libre Belgique, incensed the German Governor-General with its sarcasm and jibes. [3] Indeed von Bissing took personal umbrage at being lampooned. [4] Louise Thuliez, a school teacher, was one of the principal guides who ferried lost soldiers across Belgium to safety in Holland.

Thuliez was originally condemned to death, but her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. On return from captivity in Germany in 1918 she penned a long report on what she termed ‘The Cavell Organisation’ in which she admitted that, while working with Edith Cavell, she had actively sought out military intelligence about a supply dump at Cambrai in German occupied territory in north east France. [5] This evidence clearly indicated that Edith was operating inside a Belgian spy ring. But it ran deeper. Matron Cavell ‘was closely connected to Britain’s intelligence services’. [6]

Henry Baron, a British agent in France, was ‘working with the Cavell Organisation’. [7] When he later learned that his former contact, Louise Thuliez, was about to publish a booklet ‘on the Cavell affair’, Baron reported his fears to British Intelligence. Her revelation not only implicated Edith Cavell in spying but also ‘speaks about the participation of members of the agency in the Cambria spy affair’. [8] Such explosive information had to be suppressed. Knowing that proof of Edith’s involvement in espionage would blow apart the official British narrative, publication was forbidden. Baron was instructed that the British military authorities considered it ‘highly undesirable that anything that implicated Edith Cavell in ‘matters of espionage’ should be published until after the Versailles Treaty had been finalised. [9] It never was.

Yet another source of incriminating evidence was recently unearthed from private archives in the Royal Museum of the Army and History of War in Brussels. [10] Herman Capiau was part of the de Croy/Cavell underground network in 1915, and like Louise Thuliez was arrested, tried and condemned to death, but his sentence was commuted to 15 years hard labour. [11]

Before his arrest, Capiau wrote a secret report in which he identified another agent linked to the underground network’s spying activities and yet again, Edith Cavell knew and approved. He wrote: ‘… In agreement with Miss Cavell and Mademoiselle Thuliez, I sent the French government, through the intelligence agent Paul Godefroy, a request for material assistance for large-scale organisation of an evacuation service for young French recruits …’ So not only were British intelligence services supporting Edith’s work in Brussels, but the French government was directly approached for support and aid. This was likely to be financial since repatriation was an expensive business. Although the majority of Belgian citizens willingly helped the underground network without personal gain, some looked for payment. [12]

But Capiau’s report revealed that the network’s activities went beyond helping stranded soldiers to escape: ‘… whenever it was possible to send interesting intelligence on military operations, this information was forwarded to the English intelligence service punctually and rapidly’. [13] Spying was not an occasional activity. Capiau was clearly admitting that at every opportunity, information about German military activity was passed to British Intelligence, ‘punctually and rapidly’. By May 1915,  precise information on trench formations, vehicle and troop movements, arms caches and aircraft manoeuvres around Valenciennes was sewn into the clothes of soldiers who were being repatriated. [14]

Herman Capiau cited Paul Godefroy as his link with the secret services, but unfortunately Godefroy died in the Rheinbach prison in 1916. [15] After the war the prison was occupied temporarily by British military units and his files disappeared. How often is the truth denied through such action? Herman Capiau also left a handwritten note, now in the archives of the Royal Museum of the Army and History of War in Brussels under the title, ‘L’Affaire Cavell’ which names Edith, Louise Thuliez, Paul Godefroy and himself as members of the ‘organisation’ with a further list of names attached. [16] In addition to its recognised work on behalf of displaced soldiers this was a clandestine organisation which was spying on Germany.

Capiau’s lists also placed Edith as the prime link in the Brussels hub of the network whose ‘grand chef’, literally ‘big chief’ was Dr Bull, War Office. (see above) Doctor Tellemache (or Telemachus) Bull was, according to the Whitlock family archives, King Albert’s personal  dentist, and a relation by marriage to Brand Whitlock. [17] He appears to have remained  inexplicably airbrushed from the Edith Cavell story until relatively recently, when a BBC Radio 4 programme, Secrets and Spies  [18] identified Bull as a British Secret Service operator who ran a number of networks from Belgium. He was arrested by the German secret police, charged firstly with treason and tried in Antwerp on May 19, 1916, but received an extremely light sentence of 3 months imprisonment and a five thousand mark fine. [19] No matter how distant, his family connections with the Whitlocks seems remarkably coincident. The head of the American Legation was preparing to throw a party for Doctor Bull to celebrate his release in July when he discovered that Bull was to face a second trial directly related to his involvement with Edith Cavell. [20] This took place on 16 October 1916 with a representative from the American legation present. Bull and sixteen others were charged with conspiring to help Edith Cavell in ‘aiding young men to cross the frontier’, and of supplying her with funds to assist them. He was sentenced to six years imprisonment. [21]

Apart from any further and as yet unknown connections, Bull’s direct involvement means that Edith’s activities were part of an ongoing War Office and Secret Service clandestine operation. Edith Cavell was deeply involved in more than nursing the wounded and the Brussels she wrote home about must have been on a planet far distant from that portrayed by Herbert Hoover.

The very survival of Hoover’s CRB was at risk in the first quarter of 1915. Continued support was threatened by the bad press it was receiving in Britain and the awkward questions raised in the House of Commons about the foodstuff ‘taken’ by the German army. Herbert Hoover was certainly suspicious that his organisation was being undermined by individuals inside Belgium. In a letter to Brand Whitlock dated 6 March 1915, he complained that he had been severely grilled about the amount of food which was requisitioned by the German army of occupation and was alarmed that the London government intended to follow up claims to that effect which had originated in Belgium. He berated the ‘constant lying reports which appear in the English press with regard to our foodstuffs being taken by the Germans or devoted to their requisitions in the operation zone …’ [22]

Who was this coming from? Who in Belgium had the contacts and confidence to make such damning allegations? Who would be so morally outraged that, if the government appeared to be doing nothing, they could write directly to their contacts in the British press? These were not ‘constant lying reports’, but the products of good intelligence.

Hoover was himself a consummate liar and master of press manipulation. Lies were his stock-in-trade. The CRB’s propaganda campaigns were immediately stepped up. A special meeting in the Carnegie Hall in New York, called in support of the Allies by American fund-raisers, heard a message from Brand Whitlock stating: ‘Supply of food now in Belgium is sufficient only to last through this month, and that after April 1st, the need of food and clothing would be as pressing as ever, and that the entire Belgian population must continue to depend for subsistence on the generosity of the American People’. [23]

The entire Belgian population? What nonsense; but a terrific sound-bite.

Yet the Nursing Mirror reported in April 1915 that in Edith Cavell’s Brussels, the cafes were open and cigars were still being smoked. [24] Some commentators have claimed that Cavell’s article exposed the fact that the Commission for Relief in Belgium was feeding the German army. This is not so. Having carefully checked her published report in the Royal College of Nursing in Edinburgh, we can categorically state that no mention is made of the CRB. Not a word. Nothing about starving children. How strange is that in itself? Please remember that in our last blog we explained that when the editor of the Nursing Mirror received the correspondence from Edith Cavell, it had been opened and resealed. Which brings us back to the question of what other information was originally included?

What Cavell’s article did demonstrate was at complete odds with Hoover’s alarmist reports.

Can you imagine how angry the vested interests in the CRB were when they were made aware of this? The woman was dangerous. What would she write next? Given her intelligence contacts all over Belgium, what else did she know? What else had she already reported? If the network was indeed the ‘Cavell Organisation’, as Herman Capiau suggested, rather than the more aristocratic ‘de Croy organisation’, then Edith’s role must have been more proactive. To whom was she reporting?

In June 1915, Hoover left the comfort of his London home to go to Belgium in person to meet with Baron von der Lanken, head of the German political department in Brussels, and a key German figure in the international liaison of the CRB. It is important to remember that the leading members of the CRB and the Belgian Comite National de Secours and Alimentation (CNSA) moved naturally within the highest circles of the German administration in Belgium. Hoover was there to negotiate the fate of the coming harvest, a role he assumed, though the CNSA strongly objected to his presence. [25] He was well aware that London wanted an end to the press stories about German abuse of the relief organisation. So too did the Germans. Their war effort had become dependant on the food supplies they accessed through Belgium. 

In view of the strong links between the underground network for which Edith worked and its direct connections with the War Office, the Foreign Office and British intelligence that were facilitated by the de Croys, Edith was in a prime position to provide regular information to London. We know she wrote directly to the Nursing Mirror, and to the editor of The Times, [26], but given the evidence of Edith’s complicity in espionage, the British Secret Service would have known that and much more. She would have reported to them. Such knowledge would also be the concern of the CRB and the American Legation, for those were prime conduits for the transfer of information to London. Had Edith become a potentially dangerous thorn in the side of the CRB and the Secret Elite? Matron Cavell was a well-known professional figure who carried weight in the British press. Her word could poison their whole venture. She was a constant threat.

And the American, Belgian, British and German authorities knew it.

[1] Marie de Croy, War Memories, p. 127.
[2] Brand Whitlock, Belgium under the German Occupation, a personal narrative, vol.2, p. 46.
[3] Diana Souhami, Edith Cavell, p. 199.
[4] La Libre Belgique, issue 30, June 1915.
[5] Phil Tomaselli, BBC History Magazine, September 2002, p. 6.
[6] Public Records Office papers released in 2001-2 and quoted in the above.
[7] Tomaselli, BBC History Magazine, September 2002, p. 6.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Our thanks here to our colleague in Belgium,  Hugo Lueders,  who shared his personal research with us. Hugo does sterling work on centenarynews.com https://www.academia.edu/9532093/EDITH_S_WONDERLAND_IN_MEMORIAM_OF_EDITH_CAVELL_12_OCTOBER_1915#signup/close
[11] Harry Beaumont, Old Contemptible, p. 192.
[12] Ibid., p. 172.
[13] Emmanuel Debruyne and Jehanne Paternostre, “La résistance au quotidien 1914-1918, Témoignages inédites”, Racine, Brussels, 2009: ‘Trois échelons vers la Hollande’, pp. 45-51 (here: page 51) as cited by Hugo Leuders, see below.
[14] Dame Stella Rimington, BBC Radio 4, Secrets and Spies, broadcast on 15/09/2015.
[15] Hugo Lueders, Edith’s Wonderland, footnote 35 p. 15. https://www.academia.edu/9532093/EDITH_S_WONDERLAND_IN_MEMORIAM_OF_EDITH_CAVELL_12_OCTOBER_1915#signup/close
[16] Undated hand-written note by Capiau, private archives Herman Capiau, Centre de documentation, Musée Royal de l’Armée et d’Histoire militaire, Brussels.
[17] See relevant page from website below. whitlockfamilyassociation.com.s3amazonaws.com/sources/newspapers/NP0261.pdf
[18] Dame Stella Rimington, BBC Radio 4, Secrets and Spies, broadcast on 15/09/2015.
[19] Brand Whitlock, Belgium under the German Occupation, a personal narrative, vol.2, pp. 138-9.
[20] Ibid., p. 183.
[21] Ibid., pp. 225-6.
[22] Hoover to Whitlock, 6 March 1916, Document 33, Gay and Fisher, The Public Relations of the Commission for Belgian Relief, p. 52. http://www.gwpda.org/wwi-www/CRB/CRB1-TC.htm
[23] New York Times, 18 March, 1915.
[24] Nursing Mirror and Midwives’ Journal, vol. XXI no. 526, p. 64.
[25] George H. Nash, The Life of Herbert Hoover, The Great Humanitarian, 1914-1917, p. 136.
[26] The Times, 15 August 1914, p. 8.

Edith Cavell 2: The Constant Correspondent

Like many of her generation, Edith Cavell was an avid letter-writer. She served on the editorial board which launched Belgium’s first nursing magazine, “L’Infirmiere”, in 1910, and wrote occasional articles for the weekly Nursing Mirror and Midwives Journal in Britain. Edith believed passionately about nursing, about nursing techniques and good practice and understood the value of promoting educational articles. When war broke out she wrote to the editor of the Times on 12 August 1914, [1] launching an appeal for subscriptions from the British public to support her preparations to deal with ‘several hundreds’ of wounded soldiers anticipated to arrive shortly in Brussels, signing herself as Directrice of the Berkendael Medical Institute. She was concerned about her widowed mother’s health and welfare, and as the German occupation made life ever more restricted, she rarely knew if her letters reached home.

When the war began, Edith contacted the editor of the Nursing Mirror and Midwives Journal and wrote an article headed ‘Nursing in War Time’ which was published on 22 August 1914. In March 1915, she repeated the process, and sent both a covering letter to the Editor and an article about Brussels under German rule. This in itself contravened German military law. She did not identify herself by name but signed the missive ‘from your Nurse Correspondent’ [2]

The Editor was at great pains to explain to the readers of Nursing Mirror that the package sent from Brussels had been ‘torn open on both sides’ and that the letter arrived at his desk ‘resealed by the General Post Office in London’. It had originally been dated 24 March, but the date-stamp on the envelope was 15 April. The most likely reason for this was that Edith had given the letter to some trusted person or someone from within the American Legation for onward transfer to England. It had been opened, presumably in London, by a government official. We do not know what else was in the package. Had other material been removed? Who, inside the War Office, Foreign Office, or the intelligence services, had a primary interest in Edith Cavell’s correspondence?

Questions has to be asked about the letters and postcards Edith received from soldiers whom she had helped escape from Brussels. Though it might seem ridiculous to us today, grateful soldiers did send messages back to Matron Cavell to announce their successful return to England. One such incriminating postcard was presented as evidence at her trial. Since she received mail from England it had to be sent via trusted contacts or the American Legation, and since the latter only accepted mail from British government departments, it had to have passed through official channels. This means that Edith Cavell was a known and trusted contact for officers in the British intelligence services.

Edith sent news to England, and not just to the Nursing Mirror. She maintained a steady flow of correspondence to her family and friends. She wrote a cautious letter to her mother on 15 September 1914, in which she claimed that ‘life goes on as usual’ and to her sister, Florence, three days later, in which she expressed concern about the homeless and the misery that might follow a bad winter in Belgium. [3] In these instances her mail was routed through Vecht and later, Bergen op Zoom in Holland, but Edith’s letters home became progressively incautious. In a reply to her cousin Eddy, dated 11 March 1915, she explained that she received his missive through the American Consul and enclosed a list of soldiers about whose safe return to England she had concern. Unwittingly, Edith Cavell became indiscreet. She told her mother on 14 March that she could ‘tell you many things but must save them till later’, [4] and described a Zeppelin passing overhead in Brussels. Ten days later she sent her epistle to the editor of the Nursing Mirror.

The international mail system had been subject to all kinds of restrictions and was virtually closed to unofficial correspondence, but Edith Cavell had diplomatic contacts which gave her a sense of confidence. On 14 June 1915 she confirmed to her mother that ‘if anything very serious should happen to me you could probably send me a message through the American Ambassador in London (not a letter)’ [5] Clearly this was a privilege which she greatly valued, but had to keep secret. That point was reinforced by her request to the editor of the Nursing Mirror not to try to forward a copy of the paper to Brussels. She had no wish to make public her contacts with London. [6]

Edith’s second article in the Nursing Mirror reads at first as a calm and considered account of daily life in Brussels. Indeed it was so non-controversial that the reader would wonder the value of printing it at all. The point of the article appeared to contradict the prevailing message from the Commission for the Relief of Belgium that the country was in crisis. She took the reader through the hoped-for success in the early days of August ‘when we were full of enthusiasm for the war and confidence in the allies’, to the arrival of the Germans with much ‘pomp and circumstance’. However, in stark contrast to the widespread impression that Belgium was being systematically raped by the advancing German army, Cavell’s article painted a widely different picture;

‘On August 21st many more troops came through….some were too weary to eat and slept on the street. We were divided between pity for these poor fellows, far from their country and their people…and hate of a cruel and vindictive foe bringing ruin and desolation on hundreds of happy homes and to a prosperous and peaceful land. Some of the Belgians spoke to the invaders in German and found they were very vague as to their whereabouts, and imagined they were already in Paris; they were surprised to be speaking to Belgians and could not imagine what quarrel they had with them. I saw several of the men pick up little children and give them chocolate or seat them on their horses and some had tears in their eyes at the recollection of the little ones at home.’ [7]

This image does not sit easily with that of the propagandist. No rape, no pillage, no starving children, no shootings or other such hideous maltreatment? Goodness, the Bryce Report was due for publication in May, and the story in the Nursing Mirror was completely at odds with the horror-stories and anti-German allegations contained in that shameful instrument of propaganda and hate. Edith’s City of Brussels is an almost silent one without cars or bicycles in the street; no sense of bustle, no newspapers except German-sponsored editions, nothing permitted from England; no telephone contacts and movement by train was greatly restricted. In her final paragraph, she depicts the Belgian attitude to the invader as one of quiet but studied rejection.

‘The people have grown thin and silent with the fearful strain. They walk about the city shoulder to shoulder with the foe and never see them or make a sign; only they leave the cafes they frequent and turn their backs to them, and live a long way off and apart. A German officer on a tram politely asked a gentleman for a light; he handed him his cigar without a word, and receiving it back, threw it in the gutter. Such incidents happen often and are typical of the conduct of this much-tried nation.’ [8]

So life in occupied Brussels was quiet, and the spirit of the people remained defiant. But what about the picture of national destitution being put about by the Commission for Relief in Belgium? What about the starving population that had become the international concern of Herbert Hoover? Perhaps these unfortunate people were in the countryside? Yet in Belgium, a mainly rural and agricultural nation, you would expect to find the starving populous in the great cities, like…well, like Brussels. Of course there was need and poverty. Such was the fate of the poor everywhere. Those with nothing are always the first to suffer. It was as true in Glasgow and London as it was in Bruges and Brussels. But this was not the focus of Edith’s attention. She wrote about the strain of the people, not the hunger. The café culture continued as before and gentlemen were still smoking cigars. Something does not ring true here. It is not possible to have both sets of circumstance. And Edith had no axe to grind. Her agenda was to save lives and repatriate allied soldiers. (We will revisit this important document in a future blog.)

Not that the German authorities would allow Edith and other British nurses to deal with their wounded. She found herself disbarred from her professional duties. Most of the wounded German troops were ‘sent straight back home, as far as possible’, and Allied wounded ‘do not come’. A few wounded men, too seriously damaged to be able to fight again, were nursed at the King’s Palace in Brussels which served as a military hospital. But they were ‘nursed by Belgians under their own doctors’. [9] Edith found herself isolated from her calling, left more like the head of a religious order than a nursing school. She was not involved in ministering to the injured and dying from either side, as the legend would have it, but instead, rendered unemployed, or at best, massively underemployed. This explains why she had the time to be so actively involved in the underground movement.

An interesting piece of corroboration of life in occupied Belgium comes from Harry Beaumont, one of the allied soldiers whom Edith Cavell helped to escape. Harry was injured in the retreat from Mons on 24th August 1914 and saved from capture by a Belgian family called Neussy. His escape route included Brussels, Louvain and the Monastery of Averabode, where the monks looked after a group of wounded British soldiers with immense care. [10]

Harry stated that Edith Cavell was ‘running’ the escape route and their Belgian courier ‘promised to report our position to Nurse Cavell’. His story is not one of hardship and austerity. He made no mention of starving children and desperate queues for food. The very opposite is true. Harry wrote of one safe house in glowing terms; ‘our hostess was a very wealthy woman. Her house was stocked with everything of the best and for eight days, we lived like Lords.’ [11] Indeed Harry Beaumont admitted that such was the generosity of the people that even when Belgian citizens were issued with ration cards, he and his fellow escapees received far more than they would have been entitled to had they depended solely on rations. There were shortages of meat and flour, but vegetable and eggs were plentiful and the local fraternity provided extras. [12]

He also, quite innocently, demonstrated the complicity of the Commission for Relief in Belgium which clearly knew all about the de Croy network. When one of the Belgian agents in Antwerp demanded cash payment for hiding him from the authorities, Harry and his companion, at that point an Irishman, went to the headquarters of the ‘American’ Commission for Relief in Belgium. They told the story of their escape and their need for funds. The money was forthcoming. Furthermore, the Americans took control and subsidised Harry’s relatively prolonged stay in Antwerp. He was given an allowance of sixteen francs a day and placed in a safe-house of their choice. Eventually, several weeks later, on 16 May 1915, having cracked open a bottle of celebratory champagne, he boarded a tram to the outskirts of the city and, through the trials and tribulations of naked determination, reached Holland safety. His guide was directly provided by the CRB. [13] Does anyone imagine that the Americans in Brussels were not fully informed of what was happening by their compatriots in Antwerp? Not only did the Americans know what was happening, they were actively and secretly complicit.

Harry’s account gives us some clear pointers. The network for escapees was organised in Brussels through Edith Cavell. The soldiers were well fed and well treated. There was no awareness of the alleged widespread hunger and want. The Americans knew all about them network, and actively supported it, albeit in a clandestine manner. They knew all about Edith’s correspondence, and most probably knew precisely what she was reporting to London. Spying on one’s allies is not a recent phenomenon. When she was arrested in her office by the Germans on Thursday 5 August, the police found a letter sent from London; it bore the seal of the American Consulate in Brussels. [14]

Thus Edith was a major figure in Brussels medical circles whose work was highly valued by her employer, the King’s personal physician. She was acknowledged as one of the leading nursing practitioners in the land, but forbidden to practice by the occupying forces. Edith was active inside an underground and espionage network which, amongst other work, repatriated soldiers stranded behind enemy lines. Her correspondence was widespread and fearless. We know that she wrote to her family, to the British press and the Nursing Mirror. She wrote about the conditions of the people as she experienced it, and hinted strongly of wrong-doing. Edith Cavell was sufficiently important to the authorities in London and Brussels that her correspondence was transmitted through the American Legation. They had just delivered a letter to her from London when she was arrested.

Yet the Americans at the Legation and in the Commission for Relief in Belgium apparently knew nothing about her arrest … or so they were to claim.

[1] The Times, 15 Aug, 1914, p.8.
[2] Nursing Mirror and Midwives’ Journal, vol. XXI no. 526, p. 57.
[3] Diana Souhami, Edith Cavell, pp 200-203.
[4] Ibid., p. 248.
[5] Ibid., p. 259.
[6] Nursing Mirror and Midwives’ Journal, vol. XXI no. 526, p. 57.
[7] Ibid., p. 63.
[8] Ibid., p. 64.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Harry Beaumont, Old Contemptible, p. 154.
[11] Souhami, Edith Cavell, p. 221.
[12] Beaumont, Old Contemptible, p. 95.
[13] Ibid., p. 181.
[14] Souhami, Edith Cavell, p. 271.

Edith Cavell 1: Patriot Nurse, Underground Agent

Note:  Before reading our series on Edith Cavell, it would be advantageous to the reader to peruse our previous two blogs on Belgian Relief.

Warning:  Those who might be offended by evidence that Edith was much more than an Angel of Mercy, or do not wish to believe that she was sacrificed to prolong the agony of war, should not read these blogs.

Edith Cavell was the most celebrated British heroine of the First World War. The distinguished head of a Belgian nursing school, the Berkendael Institute in Brussels, she was executed by order of a German military court on October 12, 1915. She admitted aiding over two hundred allied soldiers to escape from occupied Belgium and return safely to their regiments in France or Britain, in direct contravention of German military code. According to a recent BBC Radio 4 programme  by Dame Stella Rimington, formerly director of MI5, it was more likely to have been nine hundred. [1]

She died a patriot and was transformed into a martyr of iconic status in England and Belgium. The truth of what happened to her has been mired in false claims, officially concocted reports and hagiographies that exaggerated her virtues into sainthood. Despite this, Edith Cavell was undoubtedly a courageous patriot who put the health and security of her charges before her own safety.

Executed in secret, her exploits were immediately championed by the British propaganda machine and transformed into a rallying call to men and women alike, proof positive of the evil Hun and his disregard for the sanctity of womanhood. [2] Her death boosted recruitment to the British army, and was almost as valuable in terms of propaganda as the sinking of the Lusitania. [3] It spawned posters, articles, pamphlets commemorative medals and statues. Streets, hospitals, schools, gardens, parks and even a mountain bears her name, yet the circumstances of her conviction and death do not sit easily with the official history as originally pronounced by the American Legation in Brussels and the British Foreign Office.

Edith Cavell was born in 1865 at Swardeston in Norfolk. The eldest child of four, her upbringing as the daughter of the local vicar was strictly Christian. She worked as a children’s governess for some years before deciding, at the age of thirty, to become a nurse. After four years training at the London Hospital Nurses Training School, she moved to St Pancras Infirmary as night supervisor. Her next move took her to Shoreditch as Assistant Matron at the Infirmary, but, at the age of forty-one, the straight-laced, devout Christian was appointed to a prestigious nursing post in Belgium.

Edith Cavell’s work was recognised as pioneering. Well organised and demanding the highest of standards from her nursing staff, she was recruited by the eminent Belgian surgeon, Dr Antoine Depage, to be the Matron of his newly established nursing school in Brussels in 1907. The L’Ecole Belge d’Infirmieres Diplomees grew steadily under her progressive direction and by the outbreak of War she was training nurses for three hospitals and thirteen kindergartens. [4] The project had been part-funded by the eminent Belgian industrialist and philanthropist, Ernest Solvay to the tune of 300,000 francs. [5] He was an exceptionally important businessman and later President of the Comite National de Secours et Alimentation. (CNSA) Edith’s arrival in Brussels did not please everyone for she effectively challenged the monopoly previously held by the Sisters of Charity, nuns who by custom and habit, ‘had there own way of doing things’. [6] She also branched out into journalism and had sufficient self-confidence to publish the professional magazine, L’Infirmiere, from 1910 onwards. [7]

At the outbreak of war, Edith was at home in England visiting her mother and might easily have stayed there in relative safety. Instead, she chose to return at once to Brussels, where the Depage clinics and nursing school were given over to the Belgian Red Cross. She immediately involved herself in the preparations for emergency hospitals and relief stations for the wounded. [8] Her biographers depict Matron Cavell attending to the war-wounded Belgian, French, British and to a much lesser extent, German troops, and there can be no doubt that she did so with magnificent grace; [9] But that was not her only contribution.

Edith Cavell had become a very senior figure in Belgian nursing circles not least because of her association with Antoine Depage and his wife Marie. Antoine was the founder and chairman of the Belgian Red Cross and the Surgeon Royal, personal physician to King Albert, with whom he served in exile. Antoine had also founded the Boy Scout movement in Belgium in association with several figures from the upper echelons of Belgian society like Ernest Solvay, whose vast multinational chemical company had spread across central Europe. [10] Marie Depage, always active in the Belgian Red Cross, stayed behind in Brussells for the first two months of the German occupation but later joined her husband in exile with the King at La Panne. She agreed to go to the United States in 1915 to tour on behalf of the Belgian Red Cross and was magnificently successful in fund-raising across the continent of America before returning home on board the ill-fated Lusitania. [11] Marie Depage was drowned, her body recovered, taken to Ireland and reclaimed by a grieving husband, a victim of war like those for whom she gallantly campaigned.

Edith Cavell took charge of the clinics and hospital in Belgium in the full knowledge that she had access to all of the circles of influence and power that remained there. She was associated with the aristocratic De Croy family, the Depages, churchmen and diplomats at the American legation. Her work brought her into contact with increasing numbers of soldiers, many wounded, some lost or displaced from their regiments in the chaos of war, but all were refugees, striving to escape from the Germans and the certainty of imprisonment or worse if they were caught. German military law made it a capital offence to harbour enemy soldiers, and public notices warned of the dire punishments for any such infringement. [12]

Stranded soldiers were brought secretly to Brussels by members of an underground group with whom Edith collaborated. The official record of Nurse Cavell’s valour, leaves the impression that she was the sole figure in a dangerous wartime activity, whereas she was in reality a member of a highly organised and well-connected network comprising more than thirty equally courageous Belgian patriots working tirelessly to repatriate and save allied soldiers. [13]

As autumn 1914 passed into winter, the western front began to settle into a series of entrenched defences paralleling great stretches of no-mans’ land across the north of Belgium and then south across France. Stalemated defence systems and battlefield confusions made it difficult to determine precise boundaries. The first great battle at Mons, which began on 24 August 1914, resulted in men from both sides being isolated from their comrades in strange and unaccustomed terrain. Underground organisations were quickly set up in Belgium to assist displaced allied soldiers. These men also served to pass messages and information to London and to disrupt and unsettle the German forces of occupation. Spy networks abounded [14] and Brussels had long been a hub of intelligence activity. [15] While an essential part of this work was to assist Allied soldiers trapped behind enemy lines, wounded or otherwise, gathering information about the German army was also of great importance.

News of troop dispositions, the location of armament dumps and other supplies, railway timetables and information about enemy morale were equally valuable. The underground networks also carried mail and family messages to and fro between Brussels and London and aided in the distribution of anti-German news-sheets like ‘Private World’ and ‘Free Belgium’ [16] All of this was extremely dangerous work and marked anyone involved as a spy. The British Secret Service was the principle source and provider of funds for this activity, and regular reports on the German occupiers were channelled via Brussels and Holland to London and the war office. [17] British Military Intelligence knew about the organisation which successfully repatriated hundreds of soldiers, as did the foreign office, important players in what was to become a highly suspect game of denial.

The underground network in which Edith Cavell played a key role, operated from the Franco-Belgian border between Bellignes, Mons and Maubeuge, through Brussels itself and then on to Antwerp and various points on the Dutch border. It was a very prestigious organisation headed by Prince Reginald de Croy, the Belgian aristocrat and diplomat, and included his sister, Princess Marie de Croy, whose war memoirs provide a unique insight into the events surrounding the arrest and trial of the entire network in 1915. The de Croys belonged to one of the most prestigious families in Europe whose family ties crossed geographic boundaries.

The de Croy network included men and women from across the social spectrum. War is always a great leveller. The grand chateaux of the de Croys at Bellignes housed many escaped allied soldiers, especially after the battle of Mons, who, once suitably recovered, were routed to safety via Edith Cavell in Brussels where they were kept hidden in safe houses. [18] Noblewomen, including the Princess de Croy and the Countess de Bellevilles, worked with servants and townsfolk to help transfer literally hundreds of desperate soldiers across dangerous forests, minor roads and little used paths to the border. The Catholic clergy and religious houses were involved in what they saw as a work of mercy, and all along the route, ordinary citizens risked their lives to aid and abet these harried and often starving escapees. Food, clothing, false documentation and money were provided for them, though it often took weeks to organise. The Belgians did this without reward and without regard to their personal safety. There is however no doubt that Edith Cavell ran the Brussels-based hub of the de Croy network. [19]

It is important at this juncture to explain the international connections enjoyed by the House of de Croy. Reginald, Prince de Croy was a Belgian diplomat, who doubled as a messenger and conduit for the Resistance. Prior to the war, he spent ten years in the Belgian Embassy in London and risked arrest constantly as he ferried to and fro across the Franco-Belgian-Dutch borders. [20] His sister Marie explained in her memoirs that ‘He was entrusted with various messages from the French to the Commission of Relief for Belgium (CRB). He carried these to Brussels where the Committee sat, and also to the American Embassy [Legation], as several concerned breaches of our rules of war. Of course it was useless to complain of abuses’ [21]

What kind of breaches of the rules of war would concern the Commission of Relief for Belgium (CRB)? What breaches would the American Legation in Brussels be interested in? The Americans claimed to be neutral; the Commission was allegedly only involved in the provision of food and clothing for the starving Belgians and French in occupied zones. The ‘abuses’ must therefore have referred to the supply of food, and the most likely scenario is that the Resistance could see that the food was going, not just to the Belgian population, but to front-line German soldiers. Indeed by 1915 such allegations were known within the highest echelons of the Foreign Office in London, and had caused adverse comment in what Herbert Hover referred to as the ‘constant lying reports which appear in the English press.’ [22]

Reginald’s brother Leopold served on the Ypres salient, and such was his level of importance to the British war effort that when he returned through London he ‘called at the War Office, wherein he was able to catch up with news from ‘home’ from a dozen men recently come back from Bellignes’ [23] Both brothers were frequent visitors to the War Office where the troops who had escaped through de Croy network were debriefed. British Intelligence was aware of what was happening in that part of Belgium from all manner of sources. They knew of de Croy’s valuable network, and the role of Edith Cavell, that is certain, but were they simply passive recipients of occasional information, or actively managing a high-level spy network?

One amazing security lapse almost blew the network apart. Marie wrote that her brother Reginald, ‘after calling at the War Office’ was on his way to catch a boat back to Holland when his attention was drawn to a newspaper article which all but identified the underground network headed by the de Croy family. Reginald ‘rushed to a telephone and called an official, with whom he had been in touch, begging anxiously, that unless they wanted us all shot, this sort of publication should cease.’ [24] Thereafter the censors stepped in. Unfortunately they failed to stop some of the rescued soldiers from sending Edith Cavell postcards to express their gratitude and let her know that they had successfully returned home.

Marie de Croy stated that ‘Reggie’ was well aware of Edith Cavell’s personal investment in the safety of these Allied soldiers. She had spent all of her own savings on clothes and food ‘which had to be paid for in ready money, and Reginald was determined to try and obtain subsidies from the army, especially for Miss Cavell’. [25] Edith operated within a high-profile network, known to the British Government, the American Legation, the Belgian Government in exile, the Comite National de Secours et Alimentation in Brussels and the CRB. It actively liaised between them, was aided by them and sought funding from them as necessary.

Edith Cavell was a cog in a very influential organisation. However, evidence has emerged that proves she was more than a mere cog.

[1] Secrets and Spies, BBC Radio 4, broadcast on 15/09/2015
[2] Possibly the worst of the propaganda hagiographies is William Thomson Hill’s  The Martyrdom of Nurse Cavell: The Life Story of the Victim of Germany’s Most Barbarous Crime. London: Hutchinson & Co., 1915.
[3] H.C. Peterson, Propaganda for War, p. 61.
[4] Diana Souhami, Edith Cavell, p.105.
[5] Ibid., p. 19.
[6] The British Journal of Nursing, May 1924, p. 112.
[7] Helen Judson, “Edith Cavell”. The American Journal of Nursing, July 1941, p. 871.
[8] Nursing Mirror and Midwives’ Journal, vol. XXI no. 526
[9] Hoehling, A. (1957). “The Story of Edith Cavell”; The American Journal of Nursing, 1320-1322.
[10] Kenneth Bertrams, Nicholas Coupain, Ernest Homburg, Solvay, History of a Multinational Family Firm, p. 2.
[11] New York Times, April 27, 1915.
[12] Paragraph 58 of the German military code.
[13] Princess Marie De Croy, War Memories, pp. 100- 211. https://archive.org/details/warmemories00croyuoft
[14] Debruyne, Emmanuel: Patriotes désintéressés ou espions vénaux? Agents et argent en Belgique et en France occupées, 1914-1918, in: Guerre mondiales et conflits contemporains, 2008/4, no. 232, p. 25-45.
[15] Christopher Andrew, Secret Service, The Making of the British Intelligence Service, p. 45.
[16] Marie de Croy, War Memories, p. 117.
[17] Ibid., p. 111.
[18] Harry Beaumont, Old Contemptible, p. 148.
[19] Princess Marie de Croy, War Memories, p. 106.
[20] Ibid., p.111.
[21] Ibid.
[22] George Gay and H.H. Fisher, The Public Relations of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, Document 33, pp. 52-3 http://www.gwpda.org/wwi-www/CRB/CRB1-TC.htm
[23] Marie de Croy, War Memories, p.131.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Ibid., p.118.

The Commission For Relief In Belgium 10: Circulating Lies; Denying Truth

In early March 1915, Hoover complained to Ambassador Whitlock, ‘I have had a severe drilling this week from the English Government with regard to our whole organisation in Belgium’. [1] He was upset that they were investigating the claims he had formerly made due to ‘the constant lying reports which appear in the English press as regards to our foodstuffs being taken by the Germans or devoted to their requisitions in the operations zone.’  Hoover knew that there was what he called ‘ the military party’ which included Churchill and Kitchener, ever ready to find fault. He had to be careful. Complaints had been lodged that there were not enough independent Americans employed to oversee the distribution.

‘I told them we had about fifty Americans at work, which was deemed insufficient’. Later in the same letter, Hoover admitted that he had lied to the British Government: ‘I am assured that if the knowledge came to them that our staff had been limited to twenty-five members, they would at once say that this is absolutely inadequate.’ [2]  It was a sure sign of complicity that he confided so intimately with the Ambassador. CRB was not going to comply with the official demands. It didn’t have to. Lord Percy had explained; no matter how it might be made to look, ‘please accept my word of honour that we only desire to help’. [3]

This particular passage completely undermined Hoover’s claim that every sack of flour was accounted for. It also laid bare the naked lie that sufficient independent American observers were employed to ensure that the Germans fulfilled the conditions of non-interference. Given the thousands of kilometres of canals and rivers in Belgium, the broken roads and railways, where dangerous passage was carefully negotiated and by- roads and diversions abounded, how could twenty-five American Rhodes scholars plucked from Oxford undertake this task properly? [4] These well-meaning undergraduate students may have had a smattering of French, but were ignorant of Flemish or the Walloon dialect, and were accompanied everywhere by Germans who dictated what they saw and where they saw it. [5] Although they had been warned to expect personal hardship, the ‘observers’ had ‘ luxuries thrust upon them, chateaux in which to live, automobiles in which to ride, and appointed offices in which to work.’ [6]

To add insult to injury, the American Legation staff in Brussels quickly came to the conclusion that the Rhodes scholars were, almost to a man, useless. They lacked maturity and discretion and had a conceit of themselves which made relationships difficult. One volunteer from Oxford told Brand Whitlock that God had called him to go to Belgium. Whitlock was determined to obtain ‘through Hoover’s intercession’ a call for him to go back. [7] The Germans ensured that these American students found it impossible to keep a close scrutiny on the importation and delivery of foreign foodstuffs. The Rhodes scholars served the Secret Elite purpose as a mere fop to the pretence that the food was destined for Belgian mouths only.

Hoover lied without compunction, and generally speaking, he got away with it. Indeed his communications with the German Governor, General von Bissing, show that at exactly the same time as he was vying for Lloyd George’s financial commitment, Hoover was warning the Germans that the English Government strongly objected to the introduction of foodstuffs into Belgium from neutral states on the grounds that it was relieving the Germans from the duty of themselves feeding the Belgians … that therefore this was a great military advantage to the Germans and a great military disadvantage to the English’ [8] And finally he touched on the truth, “We feel that while our service is personally beneficial to the Belgian civil population, it is nevertheless of the utmost importance to the Germans from every point of view.” [9]

While Hoover had approached his appeal to Lloyd George from the standpoint that Britain had a responsibility to save the Belgians from starvation, his position with General von Bissing was that this whole organisation worked to the utmost benefit of the Imperial German Army ‘from every point of view’. [ibid] The subtext for von Bissing clearly warned that if the CRB withdrew, the consequences for the German war effort would be disastrous.

The Germans could be very difficult about the number of passes granted to American observers, and when the novelty of chaperoning the Rhodes scholars wore off, they treated some of them with contempt. The American Under-Secretary Hugh Gibson squared up to Baron Oscar von der Lancken, who headed the German political department, in November 1915 and submitted a memorable note of the meeting. Gibson was angry and complained bitterly that while German authorities in occupied Belgium were placing all kinds of obstacles in the way of CRB, the military authorities in the North of France ‘evidently understood the vital importance of the work’. He warned the Baron that ‘in the event of necessary withdrawal’, the British Government would not entertain any other neutrals taking over. Von der Lancken retorted petulantly that Germany ‘has plenty of food now [ late 1915] coming from the Balkans and that the Belgians would not starve’.

Gibson’s reply was very instructive. In sarcastic mode he regretted that the Germans had not informed the CRB of this at an earlier meeting. He pointed out that they continued the work ‘only because we thought it was needed by the German Government as well as by other belligerents.’ [10] Consider that statement. Gibson acknowledged that the CRB continued its work because it thought the importation of foodstuffs ‘was needed by the German Government …’ The Commission was working for Germany too. Von der Lancken, of course knew this and his apologies were forthcoming. He took leave of Gibson in ‘an unusually friendly manner.’ [11]

In fact the exchange between Gibson and von Lancken was a double-bluff which added more to the charade which surrounded the importation of supplies, than the reality of what was actually happening. Both knew that the German army was crying out for the supplies of food that flowed through the port of Rotterdam. Oscar von Lanken spoke with the forked tongue we have long associated with senior members of the diplomatic corps. His official reports to Berlin told a very different story. He and members of his department met with the CNSA on a daily basis and, as he saw it, constantly thwarted the CNSA’s attempts to lay down the law in Belgium. [12] The Germans were also sensitive to their vulnerability to spying and took measures ‘to make espionage and the transmission of illicit information to Britain, as was practised by some members of the CNSA, impossible.’ [13] The comment was written in August 1915. (Please bear that in mind when we turn our attention to Edith Cavell in the next series of blogs.)

Germany’s very survival depended on the continuation of the Belgian Relief agencies. When the British foreign office laid down conditions and demands in response to revelations in the London press that Germany was requisitioning Belgian produce, they could not be ignored. Von Lancken wrote in his report to Berlin in August 1916 that the whole question of wheat imports was so critical to survival that the British government should be given no excuse to suspend the CNSA’s activities. In his 1916 reports he acknowledged that the continuation of food supplies to Belgium and the North of France was of ‘major self-interest to the Reich’ [14] Interestingly, when the German authorities backed down from wholesale removal of the Belgian harvest, von Lancken noted that German soldiers could still buy produce from Belgians for their personal use with the approval of the British government. [15] One can but wonder what the allied troops confined to the strictures of the trenches would have made of that fact.

As his official reports between 1915 and 1918 demonstrated, von Lancken took pride in Germany’s success in using the CRB to its own benefit. He mocked the ineffective checks made by the Rhodes students writing;

‘in spite of this supervision, we have, once again, successfully routed an appreciable quantity of foodstuffs to the [western] front or to Germany, and just as profitably, made use of local products for the occupying force – by means of the clauses which were kept voluntarily elastic or thanks to arrangements contracted secretly with the neutral committee or again with their unspoken tolerance.’ [16] This was a breathtaking admission which  blows all other claims out of the water.

Von Lancken’s reports indicated collusion and tacit understanding. He clearly admitted that the German authorities were secretly rerouting appreciable quantities of relief food both to the army at the front and to the civilian population in Germany. Furthermore he explained how it was done. The elasticity of the regulations which were supposed to ensure that the foodstuffs went only to the needy Belgian population made a nonsense of such claims. In another official report he scorned the agreements within which the German army of occupation was supposed to operate as ‘deliberately woolly and vague’, claiming that the advantages that Germany gained from the work of the CRB continued to grow and grow. [17] Sadly, no mainstream historian appears to have spoken out against this scandal.

Let there be no doubt. The German army and its subsequent capacity to continue the war depended on the continued success of The Commission for Relief in Belgium. How much plainer can we be? The CRB played its part in deliberately prolonging the war.

[1] George Gay and HH Fisher, Public Relations of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, Vol.1. p. 52, Document 33.]
[2] Ibid.
[3] Gay and Fisher, Public Relations, p. 309, Document 190.
[4] The appointment of American Rhodes Scholars from Oxford University was altogether appropriate for the Secret Elite. The scholarships had been created by Cecil Rhodes, the man whose imperial dream was to create a world dominated by the best of English culture. The reality of a one-world Anglo-Saxon-based cabal developed from this into the Secret Elite who had caused the First World War . [Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War, pp. 17-30.]The American Rhodes Scholars were thus presumed to be an outstanding choice to support the CRB in their work, though they were in fact completely inappropriate for the task, had it been genuine.
[5] John Hamill, The Strange Career of Mr Hoover Under Two Flags, p. 318.
[6] Tracy Barrett Kittredge, The history of the Commission for Relief in Belgium 1914-1917 – Primary Source Edition, p. 90.
[7] Whitlock to Page, 19 December 1914.
[8] Gay and Fisher, Public Relations, pp. 48-49, Document 31.
[9] Ibid., p. 49.
[10] Gay and Fisher, Public Relations, pp. 73-74, Document 43.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Michael Amara et Hubert Roland, Gouverner En Belgique Occupee, p. 99.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid., p. 214.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Ibid., p. 334. Report August 1916 – January 1917.
[17] Ibid., p. 298. Report February-July 1916 – January 1917.

The Commission For Relief In Belgium 9: ‘Not One Ounce Of Bread In Belgium Today’

Because the official histories of the First World War omit the Commission for Relief in Belgium, the extent of the deception has gone unnoticed. How could the flow of foodstuffs be maintained in such quantities that the Belgian need was more or less met and at the same time the Germans were able to benefit from the supplies and support their own people? Did no-one see this? Were there no complaints? Surely, with such massive sums of money flowing between New York – London, and the volume of trade between America, Rotterdam and Brussels so obvious, malpractice could not be hidden from public scrutiny. The answer is remarkably straightforward. It was. The CRB had political protection and the governments resorted to flagrant denial on both sides of the conflict.

We know that the Germans gave the necessary formal assurances in a letter to Brand Whitlock, the American minister in Brussels, on 14 November 1914. They promised faithfully that any imported supplies would be scrupulously respected, free from seizure or requisition and their possession, control and disposition would be entirely in the hands of the Comite National de Secours et Alimentation (CSNA). [1] So far, so good, but out of the blue Hoover’s lies about imminent disaster were unmasked by an article published in the New York Times on 22 November 1914. The personal adjutant to the military governor at Antwerp mocked the claim that the Belgian people were on the brink of starvation. He boasted that ‘an inter-communal commission had been organised at our suggestion and that all districts are being supplied’. The adjutant, [2] claimed that ‘if America has not been so soft-hearted as to send foodstuffs … we should certainly have considered it our duty to bring food from Germany, for … it is our duty to see that the people do not starve.’ [3] He was of course, absolutely correct, but this was precisely the message which could have destroyed the CRB before it was fully established. Hoover and the commission stamped on it immediately. When he threatened to close down American Relief the German Government quickly denied the claim and thanked the Americans for their vital work in helping avoid starvation. [4] Apparently, it was a misunderstanding made worse through poor translation. Not so. It was the very truth that everyone involved feared might spoil one of the world’s greatest scandals.

Caution was the by-word. Great care had to be taken to avoid alerting detractors to the scheme. In London, the British Cabinet was split over the issue of supplying food to Belgium. Indeed the impression given in October 1914 was that Cabinet Ministers thought they were discussing whether or not to approve the entry of food into Holland  under the guarantee of the Spanish and American Ministers, to be used solely for refugee Belgians [5] rather than the entire civilian population.

Kitchener, Churchill and Lloyd George voiced concerns that the Germans would use these supplies and take advantage of Belgian produce, but Grey, Haldane and Asquith were in favour and despite these objections, it went ahead. How unusual. The Ministers for War and the Admiralty, the voices of the army and navy, were strongly set against the importation of food to Belgium, as was a majority in Cabinet, yet it went ahead. What’s more, if they imagined that the food was ‘solely for refugee Belgian civilians’, they were being misled.

As early as December 1914, when Hoover was thwarted by the slow progress in obtaining the necessary funds to kick-start the CRB, he received a prudent note from Lord Eustace Percy at the Foreign Office. Knowing who and what he represented, Hoover expected doors to open and government approval be given automatically at every turn, but the Secret Elite could not deliver instant success. As ever, the ordinary person’s opinion remained vital to public support for the war. Matters had to be agreed in secret. Opposition in Parliament and in the press could flare up unexpectedly, and secret deals were always laced with the possibility of exposure. Concessions had to be fought for and conditions for approval, met.

Churchill’s department was positively obstructive. The Admiralty Trade Division took independent action to dissuade shipowners carrying cargoes of food to Dutch ports [6] stating unequivocally that ‘the Admiralty considers it most undesirable that any British vessels should be employed in adding to the already very large supplies of grain etc. which are flowing into Holland’. Such interference had to be stopped and Lord Percy leapt to Hoover’s support stating that he would ‘push the matter with all the force I can.’

What Lord Percy promised was unequivocal. His actions confirmed that a coterie inside the British Cabinet was fully committed to support the CRB, even although, from time to time, newspapers complained that the Germans were siphoning off the food supplies. Percy calmed the turbulence by assuring Hoover that ‘you must not let the momentary difficulties created by the action of overworked officials at the Admiralty or elsewhere dishearten you. Neither must you feel hurt if I put to you from time to time the unfounded rumours we hear about what is happening in Belgium. I want to nail the lies as they come up, but you mustn’t take any such enquiry as indicating that our sympathy with you in your work is slackening in any way. Whatever appearances may be, please accept my word of honour that we only desire to help, not interfere.” [7]

‘unfounded rumours … nail the lies … my word of honour … we only desire to help’

This was a letter of affirmation, a promise to Hoover that the Foreign Office was right behind him, even though from time to time, it may have to appear to take a different public stance. Games would be played. Warring sides would have to appear to be at cross purposes. But ‘our sympathy with you in your work’ will not slacken. It was a promissory note. And Lord Eustace Percy was as good as his word.

Hoover was not. He was prepared to make any promise, give any assurance and fabricate any answer to promote his venture and mask the real picture. In this he was greatly helped by Chancellor Lloyd George’s dramatic conversion from Cabinet sceptic to Treasury enthusiast. Hoover wrote a memorandum of a meeting on 21 January 1915 with Lloyd George, Lord Emmott [8] Lord Eustace Percy representing the Foreign Office and the Attorney General Sir John Simon, a personal friend of Secret Elite leader Alfred Milner and valued member of the cabal. [9] At the start of the meeting Lloyd George made it plain that he would veto Hoover’s proposals about the international exchange of money to facilitate the CRB ’s work because Belgian Relief was assisting the enemy and prolonging the war. By the end he had apparently undergone a personal epiphany to the extent that he gave his instant approval to Hoover’s proposals. [10] Yet again a key player changed his stance to fall in line with the Secret Elite. Amazing. How could Lloyd George go from his conviction at the start of the meeting that Belgian Relief was aiding the enemy and prolonging the war, to an absolute about turn which gave it his full support?

When asked by Lloyd George in February 1915 to put the needs of the civilian population of Belgium on paper, Hoover produced a memorandum which began: ‘Except for the breadstuffs imported by this Commission there is not one ounce of bread in Belgium today.’ [11] He must have been aware that there were a large number of civilians in Belgium and Holland who knew better. There were spy rings and information flowed regularly across the English Channel. [12] Every alleged fact he produced could be checked out, but it was grist-to-the-mill of the propaganda machine. Although Hoover continued his bombast, he was prepared to concede that ‘foodstuffs are sold at a small profit in order to compel the more well-to-do population to assist in the support of the destitute’. What arrant nonsense. Food prices in Belgium were continuously raised by the CSNA and the profits never satisfactorily recorded.

Herbert Hoover stated categorically that ‘there has never been any interference (by the German government) with the foodstuffs introduced by us. We can account to the satisfaction of any auditor for every sack of wheat from the time it leaves Rotterdam until it reaches the Belgian civil consumer.’ [13] This nonsense was to be unmasked later, but in February 1915 Hoover raised the stakes with a more extreme threat: ‘Unless foodstuffs are introduced into Belgium from foreign sources, the decimation of this population will begin in thirty days.’ [14] Threat of the ultimate starvation of the Belgian nation was to become a constant theme in newspaper articles and appeals voiced by members of the CRB. There was never any evidence of ‘ultimate starvation’. Yet the myth remains unchallenged even in Belgium. Strange.

[1] Tracy Barrett Kittredge, The History of the Commission for Relief in Belgium 1914-1917 – Primary Source Edition, p. 81.
[2] He was a German aristocrat, Major Frankenburg and Ludwigsdorf, personal adjutant to the military governor of Antwerp.
[3] Kittredge, The history of the Commission, p. 81.
[4] Ibid., p. 82.
[5] Edward David, Inside Asquith’s Cabinet, pp. 201-2.
[6] George I Gay and HH Fisher, Public Relations of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, vol. I p. 308, Document 189.
[7] Ibid., pp. 308-9, Document 190.
[8] Alfred Emmott was Chair of the Committee on Trading with the Enemy and Director of the War Trade Department from 1915-1919.
[9] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 57 and 313.
[10] Gay and Fisher, Public Relations, pp. 232-235, Document 129.
[11] Ibid., p. 263, Document 146.
[12] The Germans were concerned about the amount of spying that was taking place in mid-1915. Oscar von der Lancken, Head of the German Political Department in Belgium, made particular reference to some members of the CNSA sending illegal information to Britain in the month before Edith Cavell was arrested. Ref. Micheal Amara and Hubert Roland, Gouverner En Belgique Occupee, p. 99.
[13] Gay and Fisher, Public Relations, p. 264, Document 146.
[14] Ibid., paragraph 4. p. 265.

The Commission For Relief In Belgium 8: Solving The Problem With Other People’s Money

In August 1914, the Banque National de Belge transferred its gold reserves and ‘a large number of State bonds’ to the Bank of England and despite protestations from the Germans that these assets should be returned, they remained safely in London vaults along with the printing blocks for official Belgian currency. [1] This arrangement had been secretly agreed in 1913, and though several members of the board of the National Bank of Belgium were sent by the Germans to London in February 1915 to ‘recover’ bonds and gold, the mission was little more than tokenism. There were no circumstances under which gold would have been returned. Which raises the question of what was it all about?  

The critical issue for bankers in early 1915 was the circulation of money which was becoming an ever increasing problem for both the CRB and the occupying forces. A solution had to be found. Without money, commerce would shudder to a halt. Herbert Hoover journeyed to Berlin in February 1915 to meet amongst others, the German Minister of Finance. [2] The Reichsbank offered to solve the impasse by raising a $50,000,000 loan in America, guaranteed by Germany, but to be repaid by Belgium. They suggested the construction of a ‘relief bank’ but the proposal had to be rejected. No matter how important he considered himself, Hoover did not have the power to impose a $50,000,000 debt on the Belgian government. [3]

Another proposition demonstrated just how much the ‘Relief’ business was worth to international bankers. According to Hoover’s memorandum of the meeting on 4 February, 1915, the Germans suggested that the CRB might use ‘ friends of the German Government in New York City’ to discount their bills of exchange through Max Warburg in Hamburg and the New York banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb and Co. International trade worked effectively through this system whereby one party, say, a German importer pays for American grain by a giving the American exporter a bill, much like a cheque, to be paid in three months time. If the exporter needs the cash early he can take the bill of exchange to a merchant bank which will discount it. That means the bank will instantly pay him a sum of cash at less than the bill’s value. The bank can afford to wait three months and take the full amount. It has always been big business. In wartime it was huge business.

The Warburg brothers, Max and Paul were key players in international finance. Max Warburg was head of the family bank, M.M. Warburg and Co. in Hamburg, and Paul Warburg was senior director at Kuhn, Loeb and Co. in New York. Like the J.P. Morgan empire, both Warburgs had strong Rothschild connections. [4] Paul had been instrumental in the creation of the Federal Reserve System in America, and basically both these men were deeply involved in the business deals which were wrapped around Belgian Relief. How convenient was this for the Secret Elite? Max Warburg offered to take over the market in discounting South American grain bills [5] which would divert the profits from London.

Later that same evening, Warburg met with Hoover at Berlin’s Adlon hotel and talked about his great success in discounting bills for cotton shipments from America to Germany through Kuhn, Loeb in New York. He believed that his firm could offer a better return for discounting the grain bills. [6] Next day, Hoover held talks with Albert Ballin, the Head of the Hamburg-America shipping line, and a frequent visitor to London before war broke out. Indeed Ballin’s connections in Britain gave him access to Secret Elite controlled politicians and, days before the final declaration of war, he went to London ‘ostensibly on business’. Here he met Sir Edward Grey, Richard Haldane and Winston Churchill but we do not know what they talked about. [7] Official histories limit the discussion to assurances given to Ballin that Britain would remain neutral, but was that all? Barely one week later, Albert Ballin and Max Warburg had been put in charge of the Zentraleinkaufsgesellschaft, (ZEG) the state-owned organisation charged with purchasing food for Germany from foreign countries. [8]

The Hoover memorandum states that Ballin was keen to have his impounded Hamburg-American freight ships released for use by the CRB, [9] but Hoover knew that it would not have been acceptable to the British public for German ships to freely carry goods across the Atlantic. Having taken a cargo to Rotterdam, it would have been comparatively easy for Ballin’s freight ships to slip into German waters. It was a risk too far even for the Secret Elite. However there is another consideration. Both men were rivals for the scarce commodity, food.

Hoover had the great advantage of access to the world market, while Ballin was restricted to the Romanian grain harvest and what could be imported from America through the sham blockade. [10] Ballin would also have known about the vast quantities of CRB imports flowing through Rotterdam, and precisely how much was being diverted to Germany. Given that Albert Ballin was in charge of German food procurement, and Herbert Hoover headed the Commission for the Relief of Belgium, how likely is it that their talks were limited to shipping and finance?  Are we to believe that Hoover and Ballin failed to talk about food importation? Be mindful that Hoover’s memorandum is the only known record of their discussions.

Hoover’s visit continued with a meeting with the financial advisor to the Imperial government in the company of Max Warburg who repeated ‘two or three times’ that his brother’s influence with the Federal Reserve System would be financially beneficial to the CRB. [11] The Warburgs were desperate to muscle into the markets for discounting bills of exchange and the claim that they had influence over the Federal Reserve in New York was no mean boast. Unfortunately for them, so too did J.P. Morgan. It was a non-starter, but both sides had to find a solution to the tricky problem of money. Without money workers couldn’t be paid, pensioners would go penniless and trade would stutter to a standstill. Faced with that reality-check, both the Belgian government in exile and the German government of occupation accepted a solution which was mutually beneficial.

Emile Francqui’s Societe Generale was appointed to act as the national bank in Belgium, and was granted the exclusive right to issue bank-notes until 20 November, 1918. [12] Instructed by the German authorities, these notes did not carry any national emblem or picture of the Belgian royal family or indeed anything that symbolised patriotic loyalty. [13] By this point Emile Francqui had become the ‘national mediator’ [14] and little wonder, given the power that was devolved to his bank. Naturally, banks charged for their services, and the Societe Generale had much to gain. More pertinently, this arrangement suited all parties, belligerent and neutral, and helped prolong the war.

When Herbert Hoover negotiated the massive loans for Belgian Relief from allied governments he used the J.P. Morgan organisations in America, co-ordinated through Morgan Guaranty Trust of New York which, in turn, made the requisite transfer to Morgan Guaranty in London. Part of the ‘money’ was then transferred on paper to Banque Belge pour L’Etranger in London to pay for civil servants, pensioners, schoolteachers and many other Belgian government workers. From there, the money was transferred to the Societe Generale in Brussels.

Though this was managed on ledger accounts, like all paper currencies, if accepted in exchange, the system worked. The Societe Generale had, under German authorisation, printed acceptable banknotes estimated at 1,600,000,000 Fr which circulated through the economy and underscored trade and commerce. Franqui’s bank was permitted to issue bills to the value of three times its holdings in gold, in foreign currency, in Reichsmarks and in credits on foreign banks. [15] The Societe Generale’s role was therefore, absolute. Francqui was the bankers’ banker. At this point, with an acceptable currency in circulation and used by both the public and by international banks, the German government imposed a 40,000,000 Fr (£1,600,000) tax per month on Belgium. This equates to  £114,5000,000 per month at today’s values. There was muted outrage, but little else. The bankers protested, but paid up rather than risk their personal fortunes. The Germans had agreed an important trade off. They did not interfere with overseas investments held by Belgian Banks. Perhaps that is why their protests amounted to a mere whimper.

There was an additional problem with the lack of money in circulation  because the Belgians were by nature cautious and inclined to save any spare income. In any case there were very few luxuries available outside the American Relief shops in Brussels and Antwerp. However, in September 1916, the occupying force took stringent measures to annex the public savings accounts in both the Banque National de Belge and the Societe Generale. They demanded that the funds held in Reichsbank notes be transferred back to German control or the banks would be sequestered. Whether or not the threat was real, $120,000,000 was collected for the German treasury and transferred to Berlin. [16] Germany firstly imposed a tax and carried off about one quarter of the money which the American loans had guaranteed, and then annexed savings.  This money boosted the Reichsbank’s holdings and was used by the German government to buy foreign goods. So the war was effectively prolonged because Belgian Relief provided Germany with food to sustain her armies and funds to pay for her war effort.

The popular belief was that the funds used for Belgian relief came from public charity, mostly of American origin. Not so. Though Hoover embarked on many fund-raising initiatives and made constant appeals to individuals, national groups, even Pope Benedict XV, whose Papal message to America in early December 1916 was strategically timed to coincide with Christmas gift-giving, [17] the major source of income came from official government loans organised through J.P. Morgan’s American consortium. In early 1915, Hoover had negotiated an Anglo-French-Belgian subsidy of $5,000,000 per month and in 1916 this was increased by 50% to $7,500,000 per month. [18] In 1917, The New York Times ran an article which implied that Hoover was being ‘shamed’ by the paucity of charitable funds sent from the USA, a mere $9,000,000 (under 4%) of the total $250,000,000 spent by the end of 1916, even although ‘fat profits had been made in America from the sale of supplies for Belgium.’ [19] It was a clever ploy, targeted at the American public conscience, for Hoover did not care where his funds came from. Nor do his figures make sense. In America alone, thousands of committees were formed to collect funds.  The Literary Digest alone donated over $300,000 and numerous institutions, magazines and newspapers in America ‘ gave till it hurt’. [20] We will never know the true extent of the fraud.

Once America declared war in April 1917, Hoover was able to access even greater funds from the US government, which agreed to contribute directly.  In May 1917, $75,000,000 was appropriated for his use. And the incredible fact is that these sums were credited to the French, British and Belgian Governments, but spent, as in all cases by the CRB. The money from the American Government was to be advanced in instalments of $12,500,000 per month, of which $7,500,000 was to go to Belgium and $5,000,000 to France, whether or not the afore-mentioned had asked for it. [21] These were awesome figures and the language used signalled Hoover’s primacy in deciding how funds were to be spent. His agencies decided what would be bought from suppliers all over the globe, which shipping agencies would carry the cargoes, which distributors would be employed. Fortunes were made.

Hoover was fearless in overspending other people’s money. By mid-1916 the commission’s expenditure in Belgium exceeded its income by $2,000,000 a month, [22] but Hoover knew that he would be able to source the funding for the simple reason that all of this was planned. The political will was there; it simply had to find reason. Financial muscle was never far from his centre of power. The Morgan/Rothschild axis was wrapped around the entire project; but they were not the givers, they were not donating funds; they acted as suppliers of funds … at a price. They were bankers.

[1] The Times 22 Feb. 1915.
[2] George I. Gay and H.H. Fisher, Public Relations of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, pp. 245-250, Documents 135-138.
[3] George H. Nash, The Life of Herbert Hoover, The Humanitarian, 1914-1917, pp. 86-7.
[4] Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War. pp. 214-5.
[5] Gay and Fisher, Public Relations of the Commission, p. 245, Document 135.
[6] Ibid., p. 247, document 136.
[7] Bernhard Huldermann, Albert Ballin, p. 215.
[8] Ibid., pp. 223-228. http://www.archive.org/stream/albertballin00hulduoft/albertballin00hulduoft_djvu.txt
[9] Gay and Fisher, Public Relations of the Commission, p. 248, Document 137.
[10] See our blogs between December 10 and February 4, 2015.
[11] Gay and Fisher, Public Relations of the Commission, p. 248, Document 138.
[12] Manfried Pohl and Sabine Freitag, Handbook on the History of European Banks.
[13] Brand Whitlock, Belgium Under German Occupation, p. 214.
[14] Charles D’Ydewalle, Albert King of the Belgians, p. 147.
[15] Brand Whitlock, Belgium Under German Occupation, p. 217.
[16] Ibid., p. 215.
[17] New York Times, 21 December 1916, p.8.
[18] George H. Nash, The Life of Herbert Hoover, p.197.
[19] New York Times, 31 January 1917.
[20] John Hamill, The Strange Case of Mr Hoover Under Two Flags, pp. 322-3.
[21] New York Times, 10 May 1917.
[22] George H. Nash, The Life of Herbert Hoover, p. 196.