A Nation in Exile

The Weekly Machen

This week, we return to Arthur Machen’s chronicle of the Belgian refugee crisis during the fall of 1914. The previous setting had been their disembarking at the coastal town of Folkestone. Now we see the homeless masses gather in Aldwych, a district of London. Once again, the reporter’s clear eye for details and stylistic language capture the chaos and agony of the exiled people. Machen’s ability to elicit sympathy for the downtrodden reaches a great height, and with harsh words he concludes the report with a barb of bitterness and anger.

This article is not listed in the Goldstone & Sweetser bibliography. Due to the condition of the source material, it is presented here with a question mark replacing missing text.

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A Nation in Exile
The Heroical Drama of the Refugees in Aldwych
DRY-EYED SORROW
by
Arthur Machen
October 17, 1914

The wreckage of a nation: that is what I have seen to-day in Aldwych.

Outside on the pavement a restless, uneasy, stirring crowd goes to and fro in a sad, confused distraction. There are old men and women, little children, priests, soldiers, the well-dressed and the ill-dressed; and the old phrase, “sheep that have no shepherd,” comes irresistibly into the mind. They are all perplexed, distracted, dazed, these Belgian refugees; even as mariners might be if their ship having been dashed to fragments on the rocks, a few of them had been thrown on a strange shore, having escaped by a hair’s breadth the bitter pains of death.

We do not realise, I am afraid, the true case of these poor people. Indeed, it is difficult, since, as far as I know, the memory of man has nothing parallel to the awful {?} that has come upon them. Their position is, briefly, this: they are Belgians, but for the present there is no such country as Belgium. Their king is an exile, the enemy has possessed himself of their territory with every circumstance of horror, shame, and wickedness; their homes are smoking and bloody ruins. Let us translate Belgians into Englishmen and Belgium into England; and realise their appalling tragedy by the thought of what we should suffer if their case were ours; if there were no England and that Englishmen could inhabit without danger of shame and torture and death.

The Clearing House

We are doing what we can for these unhappy exiles. The War Refugees’ Committees have made the rink in Aldwych a sort of clearing house for them, and all day long and day after day they pour into the building and cluster there, and go out again, not unhelped or uncomforted, but still wearing that helpless and distressed look. The rink is a spacious place, divided aisles, lighted from above by skylights, and now it is further divided in all directions by wooden palisades into labelled compounds. Here is a compound marked “Baggages,” here “Taunton,” “Hampstead,” “Cardiff,” “North Wales.” “Here is the Lost Property Office”—an inscription for people who have lost their country; here they issued hotel tickets.

The system is this. The refugees enter the rink, register themselves, and are then allotted to various destinations. Some are to go to Hampstead, some to North Wales; some are housed in London hotels, some in lodgings. All the while parties are being made up, guides and interpreters are being furnished outside omnibuses are in waiting to take some to the hotels, others to the railway stations. The work is being well done, and everything is going smoothly.

The New Babel

But to the eye and to the ear the Rink is all confusion. The impression is somewhat that of a market hall in the country on market day: a vast tangle of people moving hither and thither without purpose, all talking together in a jangling hum of voices. Now and again a voice is uplifted and a name is called out loudly; this means that a husband is seeking his wife or a father his daughter. Belgium has seen many separations; there are a few meetings in Aldwych, but others, that are not to be effected in this world.

Then, again, it is like the country market places, for people crowd and thicken by people fled in haste, terror calling to them as a trumpet calls. They came away hungry, they came away in such clothes as they had on when the summons to fly sounded, and the Refugees Committee does its best to feed and clothe them.

So here is what one may call the Clothing Counter or Compound, with the exiles crowding about the rails. On the floor are boots, shoes, slippers of all shapes and all sizes. There are great jack-boots that would reach up to a man’s knee, there are tiny brown shoes about three inches long. On a chair a little boy in sitting, and being fitted with a pair of shoes; and by him a Belgian Boy Scout is trying to make his choice among the boots. More shoes and boots on shelves, and bundles of clothing, too, for men, women, and children. Outside there is a van full of these bundles, and men are bringing them in all the while.

Meat and Drink

Next to the clothes the refreshment counter. Half-a-dozen helpers are cutting sandwiches and pouring milk and coffee. Here the refugees are thick; eating and drinking hungrily. Now a nurse passes out with a tray of meat and drink, now a man takes a cup of coffee to his wife, who is sitting down, weary-eyed and exhausted. There is the same look on the faces of them all; their eyes are the eyes of those who have been dazed by a great light. And that light is the light of the flame that has consumed their country.

All the while the confused murmur and jangle of voices, the hurrying and pattering of footsteps to and fro, the eyes that search eagerly for someone that is lost, the crying out of some desired name; all the while a restless, unhappy turmoil. If the spirit of Æschylus were amongst us now, a tragical drama could be written, here in this Aldwych Skating Rink is assembled the Chorus of “The Belgian Exiles,” and those whose ears are opened can hear clearly enough in the confused songs of a nation’s agony.

We pity, I think, not those who are most pitiable, but those who are most helpless. The Russian Church is now offering prayers not only for the soldiers of Russia but for the innocent beasts whose blood is being spilt during the war, they having done no harm. So one pities these poor children, who perhaps understand very little and suffer nothing much more than weariness and confusion; and yet one’s heart goes out more to the little boy of three or four, who clings to his mother’s skirt, than to his grandmother, an old woman, near on eighty, who stands by with grief in her old eyes, driven north amongst strangers from a loved home.

The Pitiable Parcels

There are many such groups. They have drawn a few chairs together and sit close, while the crowds swirl about them.

But after all, I think it is the luggage of the exiles which is the most poignant spectacle. It is as the luggage which I saw a few weeks ago heaped up in Charing Cross Station. There are a few neat bags and suitcases; there is a wicker basket with the festive inscription “Moet et Chandon” in large letters. But for the most part there are piles of the most pitiable parcels. Here is a broken cardboard box—it once held “Chemises pour Hommes”—all bursting and vainly tied with a bit of rag; here ends of a broken home protrude from a shapeless bundle in a check tablecloth, here a mattress is half covered by an old sheet. And the knots and the string all run frantic; you can hear the screech of the internal shell and its blasting impact as that bulging package was somehow, anyhow, slung together in the haste of mad terror, such has been the agony of this most wretched people.

There is another picture. The smug, prosperous German that we harbour in our folly goes home in his luxurious motor-car, and sniggers at the thought of the curse of Belgium becoming the curse of England. Ans there is the German waiter in our hotels, well-fattened on English tips, whose servility stands on tiptoes, just ready to mount into insolence.

These prosper, and those, those victims of the extremest wickedness that the world has known, have no tears left for weeping, for their sorrow is past the measure of tears.

 

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The Weekly

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