Such evidences kept reaching us of German gold at work on the very
country we were occupying. Sometimes the money itself.
My wife, when stationed by the Belgian trenches at Pervyse, asked the
orderly to purchase potatoes, giving him a five-franc piece. He brought
back the potatoes and a handful of change that included a French franc,
a French copper, a Dutch small coin, a Belgian ten-centime bit, and a
German two-mark piece with its imperial eagle. This meant that some one
in the ranks or among the refugees was peddling information to the
enemy.
In early October my wife and I were captured by the Uhlans at Zele. Our
Flemish driver, a Ghent man, began expressing his friendliness for them
in fluent German. After weeks of that sort of thing we became suspicious
of almost every one, so thorough and widespread had been the bribery of
certain of the poorer element. The Germans had sowed their seed for
years against the day when they would release their troops and have
need of traitors scattered through the invaded country.
The thoroughness of this bribery differed at different villages. In one
burned town of 1500 houses we found approximately 100 houses standing
intact, with German script in chalk on their doors; the order of the
officer not to burn. This meant the dwellers had been friendly to the
enemy in certain instances, and in other instances that they were spies
for the Germans.
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