Persons contravening these orders will be punished by a maximum imprisonment of five years and a fine which may amount to 10,000 marks, or one of these penalties to the exclusion of the other.
The shops and establishments beforementioned which, as a demonstration, shall close during the day of the 4th August will remain closed for a considerable period of time.
The placard announcing these prohibitions forbade us to deck our houses with flags! Flags, good God! Who then would have dreamed of flying flags in commemoration of the rupture of an international pact! At the most the people of Brussels had intended to wear in the buttonhole a little "scrap of paper." But the wearing of emblems was forbidden.
What the Germans did not think of forbidding was the little demonstration of sympathy which they received on the evening of the 4th. In conformity with the order, all doors were closed at 20 hours (9 o'clock German time). But in several of the popular quarters of Brussels the inhabitants were no sooner indoors than the upper windows were thrown open, and a deafening concert issued forth, in which phonographs, alarm clocks, and saucepan-lids were predominant. The patrols demanded the closing of the windows; but the people climbed on the roofs to continue their _charivari_ there. The military commandant was not pleased. It took him only five days to think of an appropriate punishment.
M. Maurice Lemonnier, acting burgomaster of the City of Brussels, has just had posted the following communication:--
"_To the Inhabitants of the Rue de l'Escalier and the Rue du Dam_:
"I place before you the translation of an extract from a letter which I have just received from the German authorities.
"I call your attention to the penalties announced against those who shall contravene the measures ordained by the German Military Government."
... Even if I am willing to recognize that the Administration of the City endeavoured, by means of its organs, to obtain the application of the prescribed measures on the 4th of this month, there yet remains the fact that in two streets isolated individuals were guilty, in a demonstrative manner, of gross misconduct toward the German patrols.
It is to be regretted that it has not been possible to discover the persons individually guilty; consequently nothing is left me to do but to take measures against the streets in which the offences were committed.