The Basis of Future Operations
The Government should have made especial endeavours to influence the working class by full explanation of the seriousness of our position, and should also not have hesitated to use force if everything else failed.
G.H.Q. knew only too well that in dealing with exemptions there were cases of favouritism, which of necessity had the same embittering effects as the shirking at home. Often and often I begged the Ministry of War to put a stop to this.
It was inevitable that, in our difficult position, we should have to turn,our attention to the occupied territories. The Ministry of War had already tackled this question, and the employment of Belgian workmen in Germany had actually begun. G.H.Q. requested the Governor-General to comply with the wishes of the War Ministry and industry generally, and did so all the more earnestly because, at that time, the Government had not even met the army's demands for additional men to the extent of passing the Auxiliary Service Law.
The conscription of workmen for Germany was in the interest of the Belgians themselves, since unemployment had reached a high figure. This conscription, after discussion with the officials in Berlin, was extended. With these extended enlistments, which at first were carried too far, there were cases of hardship, which it would have been better to avoid. They were in the main due to the Belgians themselves, who often denounced their fellow-countrymen, for one reason or another, as out of work, when this was not the case. The Governor-General put a stop to these abuses so soon as he discovered them. In course of time many Belgian workmen emigrated to Germany, without any further complaints being heard. We also conscribed Belgian workmen for work in the occupied regions. In the Belgian refugee Press and in the Entente propaganda, as was to be expected, there was a wild outcry against this procedure. The fact that similar cries were raised in Germany merely reveals a very childish judgment on the war. The military authorities were acting from patriotic duty, and not arbitrarily.
We also obtained labour, though not as much as we might have hoped, from Poland and the other occupied territories,
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