Emile Cammaerts

“ When the seventy-fifth anniversary of Belgian Independence gave him at last the opportunity of breaking the silence imposed upon him by the Congo campaign, he uttered a supreme warning to the nation: "Let us not be overconfident in our present prosperity; let us stand closer and closer together around our flag. Nations, like human beings, have to pass through a critical age which brings about old age or premature death. Its date, for young nations, falls during the last quarter of the first century of their existence." ”

“ Belgium will never be what Charlemagne made it, the nucleus of a great Empire; but, unless it remains a free factor in the history of Europe, as it was for the first time under the great emperor, conflicts between the two rivals, abruptly brought together along the same frontier, become inevitable. There is a big jump from the ninth century to the Congress of Vienna, between the glory of Aix-la-Chapelle and the establishment of Belgian neutrality ”

“ She sacrificed territory, centuries of independence, long periods of prosperity, but she remained essentially one people and one land, a small people on a small land, combining the genius of two races and two languages and acting as a natural intermediary between the great nations of Europe. Her history, up to her last fight, is nothing but the struggle of a nation to assert her right to live, in spite of her weakness, in the midst of great military Powers. Unity, first constituted in the fifteenth century, is at once endangered by the rule of a foreign dynasty. ”

“ There are no periods of Belgian history where intellectual and artistic production reached such a low level as under the Napoleonic régime. How could it be otherwise at a time when official patronage directed every activity towards imperial worship? In France, such worship, stimulated by brilliant victories, might have inspired some sincere manifestations, but in Belgium, where the people submitted to the French régime only as to a necessary evil, military glory could not provoke any genuine enthusiasm. ”

“ They must not be considered as the outcome of a crude instinct towards aggrandisement, following the military success of the Belgian army at the end of the Great War, or of a wild thirst for revenge, but merely as the outburst of irredentist feelings, nursed in silence during eighty years of neutrality, and revived, among a certain group of intellectuals, by the fierce struggle waged by the nation for the safeguard of its liberties. ”

“ Wandering through the most important squares and gardens of Belgian towns, the stranger will be astonished at the number of monuments raised to the great Belgians of the past and to the heroes of Belgian history. In Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges, and even the small provincial towns, he will find statues dedicated not only to the modern kings and statesmen, but to the leaders of the various revolts against foreign oppression, to the great artists and communal tribunes. ”

“ Literature is perhaps nowadays the most characteristic expression of civilization, just as painting was the most striking mode of expression in the Renaissance and architecture in the Middle Ages. We have seen that, in the Netherlands, civic monuments constitute a typical feature in mediæval architecture, but, though it is important to insist on the conditions which favoured and inspired the building of belfries and cloth-halls, the important part played by churches in the Netherlands, as in France and England, must nevertheless be acknowledged. ”

“ In spite of those who insist, in flattering terms, on Belgium's youth, she strongly maintains her right to old traditions and wants to keep her ancient heroes before her eyes. More or less consciously, the sculptors of these statues realized that their fathers of the Renaissance and the Middle Ages had as great a share in the making of the nation as present kings and ministers. Their sudden appearance in the midst of Belgian towns was not the result of official zeal, but the living symbol of the gratitude of new to old Belgium. ”

“ Some members of the aristocracy, like Charles Joseph de Ligne, who was, besides, a remarkable writer, were in close relations with the French philosophers, but they were only a small minority and most of the Belgian nobles were decidedly hostile to the new ideas. Voltaire, who visited Brussels in 1738, did not appreciate this provincial atmosphere: "The Arts do not dwell in Brussels, neither do the Pleasures; a retired and quiet life is here the lot of nearly all, but this quiet life is so much like tedium that one may easily be mistaken for the other." ”

“ Not only do they rank among the most inspired religious writings of the Middle Ages, but they are the expression of a deep-rooted religious movement which animated the Flemish bourgeoisie at the time, and which had its origin in the foundation of the institution of the Béguines and the Beggards, so active and so influential during the twelfth century. This movement aimed at bringing religion closer to the common people through the work of laymen who, though deeply attached to the Church, were conscious of its limitations and of the barrier which aristocracy and privilege had built around it. ”

“ There is no better illustration of the paramount importance of a strong and independent Belgium to the peace of Europe than the series of wars which followed each other in such rapid succession during the seventeenth century. It is true that, in nearly every instance, the new situation created in the Netherlands cannot be given as the direct cause of these various conflicts, resulting from territorial ambitions, dynastic susceptibilities and even, as in the case of the Thirty Years' War, from circumstances quite independent of those prevalent on the Meuse and the Scheldt. ”

“ The fifteenth century is for Belgium what the Elizabethan period is for England and the seventeenth century for France. Not only did the territorial importance of the unified provinces reach its culminating point and the national princes play a prominent part in European politics, but, from the point of view of economic prosperity and intellectual efflorescence, Bruges, Brussels and Antwerp rivalled, at the time, the great Italian Republics of the Renaissance. ”

“ No doubt, the resistance offered by the Belgian nobles to their foreign sovereigns might be simply represented as the direct effect of the feudal system and of the jealous pride which every vassal entertained towards his suzerain. But, if local ambitions became supreme in Europe in the tenth century, we may at least point out that, owing to the mixed characters of language and race prevailing in Belgium, and to the peculiar position occupied by Flanders and Lotharingia, nowhere were those tendencies more evident than in these distant marches of France and Germany. ”

“ The traveller wonders, one moment, at the change, then takes up the road again, adding one further unanswered question to his load of unsolved problems. The historian evokes the terrible years of the fifth century, when the fate of Europe hung in the balance and when the surging waves of Pagan Germanism spent their last energy along that leafy barrier which saved Christianity and Roman civilization, and incidentally gave the Belgian nation its most prominent and interesting character. ”

“ A modern nation might have been intimidated, but an old nation like Belgium, which had struggled towards independence through long and weary periods of warfare and foreign domination, was bound to resist. In challenging King Albert and his ministers, the German Government challenged at the same time all the leaders of the Belgian people, from De Coninck to Vonck and De Mérode, and the reply of the Belgian Government was stiffened by an age-long tradition of stubborn resistance and by the ingrained instinct of the people that this had to be done because there was nothing else to do. ”

“ To a people which, by tradition, was strongly adverse to militarism and centralization, it was only too easy to misrepresent measures of self-defence, urgently required by the European situation, as the first step towards autocracy and oppression. The partisans of military safeguards found themselves, therefore, in a minority, and their only support was the personal influence of the Belgian kings, who, from the first days of the new régime till the eve of the war, never ceased to emphasize the evident danger of disregarding the country's international responsibilities. ”

“ All through feudal times we are aware of the existence of the County of Flanders, of the Duchy of Brabant, and of many other principalities, but, in no official act, does the term "Belgique" occur. Even after the unification of the fifteenth century, when the country came under the rule of the Dukes of Burgundy, the notion of a distinct nationality, such as the French or the British, remains hidden to the superficial student, the Netherlands forming merely a part of the rich possessions of the most powerful vassals of France. ”

“ Their point of view was entirely contrary to that of the mediæval artists. For the latter, Art sprang naturally from a fervent mysticism, just as flowers spring from the soil. Its intimate faith does not need any effort, any artifices, to make itself apparent; even secondary works retain a religious value. The sacred pictures of the seventeenth century appear, in contrast, as a gigantic and wonderful piece of religious advertisement. ”

“ But, while they are entirely irresponsible for their weakness, which can only be attributed to the small size and the defenceless character of their country, they cannot be considered as entirely responsible for their strength. A port like Antwerp, if at all accessible, is bound to prosper under any circumstances. A town like Brussels cannot fail to benefit by its unique situation, from an international point of view. With her rich coal mines among her fertile fields, Belgium, considering her size, is perhaps more richly endowed by Nature than any other country in Europe. ”

“ Just as Flemish Art is remarkable for the religious work of the fifteenth century and the sensuous productions of the seventeenth, so Belgian writing in the nineteenth oscillates between the spirit of Jordaens and that of Memling. In spite of some modernist tendencies and a great technical boldness, Belgian literature remains deeply influenced by mediævalism. It belongs to the twentieth century, even when written in the nineteenth, or to the fifteenth. The classical atmosphere of the French seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is totally absent. ”

“ It was not through the process of Burgundian unification that Belgium became a nation. It was because Belgium had already practically become a nation, through the gradual intercourse of the various principalities, that one prince, more favoured than his neighbours at the time, was able to concentrate in his hands the power of all the Belgian princes. ”