As one of the guarantors – alongside France and Germany – of the 1839 Treaty of London, the British promised to come to the aid of Belgium in the event of invasion and, good to their word, Britain not only recognized but was determined to protect Belgium's independence and neutrality on the eve of World War One. Hence, when German forces were smashing their way across the Belgian countryside, Britain declared war on Germany on August 4, 1914.
The next day, on their way to attack France, as the heavily-armed and well-supported German invasion force advanced on its first military obstacle, the ring of forts around Liège, civilians were being executed en masse . Believing they were under attack from snipers, German commanders had their troops round up local inhabitants from surrounding villages, selected their victims and shot them; any left alive were killed at the point of the bayonet.
Soon after, cities were bombed and set aflame and hundreds of captured civilians were being similarly murdered. While hundreds of thousands of terrified Belgians fled, 'the rape of Belgium', as it became known, invoked the sympathy of the world. Newspapers across Britain supported their government's decision to defend the honour of their ally and send troops and quickly popularized the negative image of 'the Hun' rampaging through 'gallant Little Belgium'.
Although many millions of both soldiers and unarmed civilians were subsequently killed during the Great War, what is often overlooked is the impact on the families who were caught in the middle of vicious fighting, forced from their homes, fleeing from invading armies intent on killing anyone in their path. Current estimates among historians today suggest over 10 million people were displaced, sent running, losing all their possessions and considered refugees during the war.
A Belgian refugee summed up his feelings in 1914: "One was always a refugee – that's the name one was given, a sort of nickname. One was left with nothing, ruined, and that's how people carried on talking about 'the refugee'. We weren't real people any more".
After the summer invasion, over 400,000 Belgians had arrived in Holland, and half that many crossed the border into France joining 150,000 French nationals at risk who also sought shelter and freedom elsewhere and a year later, with trenches hastily built from the English Channel to Switzerland, that number had reached nearly a million.
Initially, the Dutch Government decided to locate the Belgians in camps on the outskirts of towns such as Gouda, Nunspeet and Bergen op Zoom, although preferring to call them "Belgian villages" (in order to avoid the negative association with the "concentration camps" of the Boer War), where the emphasis of temporary housing was on health and hygiene.
Once the urgent needs of food and shelter had been assessed, other issues needed to be addressed: children were desperate to find their parents, and likewise adults sought their lost children. Refugees asked questions about their status and entitlements to relief, and many wanted the opportunity to work, while children needed to continue their schooling. Food, sanitary needs, and fresh clothing had to be found.
Emergency accommodation was found in railway stations, schools, empty factories, breweries, hotels, bathhouses, army barracks, monasteries, synagogues, theatres, cinemas, cafes, and even prisons. Local authorities, diocesan committees and other associations helped to provide underwear, shoes, linen, soap and other items.
In France, on the grounds that they were deserving "victims of war," refugees received financial and other assistance from the government, as well as assistance from charitable organisations and from parish priests, and the organisations refugees themselves created, such as the Committee for Refugees of the Departement du Nord. Although many volunteer agencies were organized to assist the growing populations being displaced across continental Europe, the impact was nothing short of disastrous on local economies.
In its long history as a safe haven for refugees, Britain had given a home to French Protestant Huguenots in the 17th century and Russian Jews in the 19th century, and during the Great War would open its doors to its largest single influx of refugees and became home to 250,000 Belgians. They were initially welcomed and the government used their plight to encouraged anti-German sentiment and foment public support for the war effort.
In some purpose-built villages they had their own schools, newspapers, shops, hospitals, churches, prisons and police. These areas were considered Belgian territory and run by the Belgian government. They even used the Belgian currency. Elisabethville was one such sovereign Belgian enclave in Birtley, Tyne and Wear, named after the Belgian queen.
However, as soon as the war ended, both British and Belgian governments appealed for the refugees to return home. As early as 1914, the Belgian Repatriation Fund had been created and in 1917 the British government set up a repatriation committee to expedite their return. Many Belgians had their employment contracts terminated, leaving them with little option but to go home. The government offered free one-way tickets back to Belgium, to get them to leave the country as quickly as possible.
Within a year of the war ending more than 90% had returned home. They left as quickly as they came, leaving little time to establish any significant legacy, with two notable exceptions: Hercule Poirot, subsequently created by Agatha Christie, and a single monument in London's Victoria Embankment Gardens given in thanks by the Belgian Government. "It was the largest influx of refugees in British history but it's a story that is almost totally ignored," says Tony Kushner, professor of modern history at the University of Southampton.
In Britain, sympathy for Belgian refugees derived from a belief that they had suffered unspeakable torment at the hands of German troops. "Brave little Belgium" was a term commonly used in the UK, where "King Albert's Book" allowed British dignitaries to pay "tribute to the Belgian King and people." By 1916, 2,500 local refugee committees had been established and the secretary of the War Refugees Committee publicly applauded the efforts of local committees and Belgian refugees to find work.
Yet concern about the burden on the British taxpayer, the sacrifices made by British conscripts overseas, and anxieties about the "disreputable" sexual conduct of Belgian women, help explain why public sympathy began to diminish by 1916. Alternate plans drawn up in the UK to resettle Belgian refugees in Chile and South Africa came to naught in fact because the Belgian authorities insisted that refugees should contribute to national reconstruction in Belgium after the war.
After four years of fighting along the Western Front most Belgian refugees had returned by the end of 1919 to find countless cities and towns reduced to rubble: houses, shops, churches and temples, schools, office buildings, factories, warehouses, police and fire stations, simply were gone.
The French government had made no preparations for refugees before the outbreak of war. When Germany invaded, administrators attempted to disperse Belgian and French refugees to the interior of France and avoid overcrowding areas near the front. But refugees wished to stay as close as possible to their homes in the hope that they might return before Christmas.
As the war dragged on, and prior to the US declaration of war in 1917, the momentum increased in favour of the German forces and as they advanced towards Amiens and then Champagne in France, the number of refugees rose rapidly from 1.32 million in February to 1.82 million in July.
Keeping in mind it was a Serb national who had originally shot the Austro-Hungarian Archduke and his wife in 1914, rather than face imprisonment in Austria, Hungary or Bulgaria, many Serbs also fled to seek safe haven in France, and its colonies North Africa, and it is estimated at least 140,000 died while trying to cross into Albania.
In the first phase of the war, around 40,000 refugees of Italian extraction sought exile in Italy rather than remaining under Austrian rule. However, the greatest catastrophe occurred in November 1917 following the defeat of Italian forces at Caporetto, which resulted in some 400,000 Italian civilians fleeing to the south.
Some of the largest atrocities committed during and after World War I were directed at the Armenians. The population of 2 million was decimated by what was later recognised as the first genocide of the 20th century. Systematic persecution under the Ottoman empire meant that half of that population were dead by 1918 and hundreds of thousands were homeless and stateless refugees.
In 1915, Ottoman officials and military commanders turned on entire Armenian communities and forced men, women and children to trek across the desert in the most arduous conditions. Up to 250,000 Armenians evaded the deportations by crossing the Russian border in August 1915, although one in five died en route. More than 105,000 ex-Ottoman Armenians sought refuge in Russian-administered Erevan, quadrupling its size. They were the lucky ones. Women and children who survived the deportations and remained in Armenia were protected or abducted (depending on one's point of view) by Turkish and Kurdish men.
Around 200,000 Jewish refugees fled Galicia and Bukovina in the first year of fighting (this figure does not include those who were either resettled within the region or dispatched to the Russian interior). They settled in Vienna and parts of Bohemia and Moravia. According to the Austrian Ministry of the Interior, by the end of 1915 some 386,000 refugees were living in Austria, two-fifths of them Jews.
Generally speaking the language used to characterize the refugee movement in Russia and Eastern Europe reinforced the widely-shared sense of calamity. Some witnesses believed that the "boundless ocean" of refugees could never properly be navigated. More typically, contemporary observers in the Russian interior used language that was directly reminiscent of a disaster like a river bank being broken. Thus "flood", "wave", "deluge", "avalanche" and volcanic 'lava'.
The refugee crisis provided opportunities for professionals to carry out important relief work. Some of the nurses who were attached to the Scottish Women's Hospitals and American Women's Hospitals remained in the field. AWH nurses were employed in Macedonia until the 1930s, for example. Quaker relief workers stayed on in Russia and Poland to assist with famine and typhus relief.
Edith Pye and Hilda Clark, a midwife and obstetrician, respectively, established the Friends War Victims Relief Committee in France in 1914. They worked extensively with refugees in northern France and afterward moved to Vienna to assist malnourished children. Clark then devoted herself to various relief and reconstruction projects in Poland, Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria and Turkey. Both women also assisted child refugees from Spain after 1936.
Likewise Francesca Wilson travelled from France to Corsica, to assist Serbian refugees, and Yugoslavia, before joining Pye and Clark in Vienna. She too became involved in relief work in Spain.
Impressive and ever-lasting careers were thus forged in the crucible of the Great War, despite the atrocities that continue today. Lest we forget.
