Belgae

“ 1 All Gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the Belgae inhabit, the Aquitani another, those who in their own language are called Celts, in ours Gauls, the third. ”

“ THE RELICS OF GENERAL CHASSÉ
A TALE OF ANTWERP.
That Belgium is now one of the European kingdoms, living by its own laws, resting on its own bottom, with a king and court, palaces and parliament of its own, is known to all the world. And a very nice little kingdom it is; full of old towns, fine Flemish pictures, and interesting Gothic churches. But in the memory of very many of us who do not think ourselves old men, Belgium, as it is now called—in those days it used to be Flanders and Brabant—was a part of Holland; and it obtained its own independence by a revolution. ”

“ On Sunday night, August 2, 1914, Germany sent an ultimatum, demanding passage of her armies through Belgium to France. To the Kaiser, Belgium was no more than a turnpike road to Paris. The hero, King Albert, knowing he had his people behind him, refused to cringe and become a German slave. It was like the boy David defying the giant Philistine. The national flag—black, yellow and red—the ancient colors of Brabant, the central province in the kingdom of the nine that made Belgium a nation—was unfurled everywhere by “men determined to be free.” ”

“ Still happier was he to have with him in harness, drawing the revolving, quick-firing cannon, of which he was sergeant pointer, his pet dog, Goldspur. Like man, like dog was the Belgian War Department’s acceptance of both—“in the first class of efficiency.”
This was Belgium at peace, under her beloved King Albert and Queen Margaret. Rich in wonders of art and architecture, in fairy, folk wonder and hero lore, in traditions of valor and industry. When, again and again, the story teller visited the country, he brought back, each time, the seed, for flowers, in the bed-time story-garden. ”

“ Personally I find them a trifle disappointing; they come, no doubt, as a welcome relief after the rest of Belgian landscape, which I have heard described, not altogether unjustly, as the ugliest in the world; but the true glory and value of Belgium will always be discovered in its marvellously picturesque old towns, and in its unrivalled wealth of painting, brass-work, and wood-carving. Compared with these last splendours the low, wooded wolds of the Ardennes, with their narrow limestone valleys, seem a little thing indeed. ”

“ The Belgians have paid a high price for freedom. Ever since commerce and the arts found there their first foothold in Northern Europe, the flourishing cities and fertile fields of Belgium have been the lodestar of political adventurers and needy despoilers. They have been the sport of intrigues and royal marriages. They have been fought for by Burgundian, Spaniard, Austrian, Frenchman, Dutchman, and German. ”

“ The national culture of Belgium is a synthesis, if I may so call it, where one finds the genius of two races—the Romance and the Germanic—mingled, yet modified by the imprint of the distinctively Belgian. It is in that very receptivity—the fact that it has absorbed and unified the best elements of Latin and Teutonic civilization—that the originality of the Belgian national culture resides. ”

“ One half of its divided tail is Walloon and the other half Flemish; yet now, with pure patriotism, and loyal to a hero king and a noble queen, and with all the people united in devotion to their homeland, only the Belgian lion’s tail recalls the history of the past; while its body and limbs represent the majesty, the courage, and the devotion of the brave Belgian people. ”

“ What about the Belgian civilization in the time of the Burgundian dukes?
We know that, toward the end of the fourteenth century, Flanders suffered a decline after the bloody civil war: the German merchants left Bruges, Ghent lost a part of its population, Ypres was half destroyed, Ostend became a sandy waste. The “polders” were inundated; wolves and wild boars infested the country.
Fifty years later, during the reign of the Burgundian dukes, Belgium had again become the richest country in Europe. That revival was, of course, not attributable to the dukes alone. ”

“ It was out of the wedding of the fairies of the sand and clay, that beautiful Belgium was born—the country which the men and women living in it love so dearly, that they gladly die for it. In time of war, before the battle began, the knights and foot soldiers used to kneel down on the ground and kiss it. Then they prayed to be strong and brave, and vowed to defend their soil, from all enemies. ”

“ We congratulate Elizabeth on escaping from "her German Garden."
"Few people," says The Witney Gazette, "are familiar with the history and resources of Belgium." How true this is may be seen from our contemporary's next statement:—"A large section of its population consists of a race known as the Walloons, the ancient descendants of the Belgians."
"Father," asked the actor's little son, "why does the Kaiser wear a helmet with an eagle on the top of it?" "To show that he's 'got the bird,'" replied the brilliant Thespian. ”

“ It was fitting that such a poet should be a Belgian; for Belgium is the center of the new industrialism in Europe. Here are great iron and steel plants, and vast cobwebs of railroads, and harbors to which the commerce of the world pours in. The past and the future meet here, for Belgium has an old history and art; it is a battle-ground of Catholicism and Protestantism, of modern science and ancient mysticism, of French revolution and German autocracy. It is wealthy, with all the class contrasts and antagonisms which modern capitalism brings. ”

“ The Rise of Belgian Industry
Belgium’s story, as complex in pattern as the tapestry of Flemish looms, is interwoven with the bright threads of genius, and, no less, with the gold of commerce and the crimson threads of war. Proud mistress of the arts as Belgium can claim to be, she has held her own for centuries past as a vigorous industrial nation. Tribes that came across the Rhine after Caesar’s conquest of the Gauls, 57-52 before Christ, were permitted by the Romans to settle upon the lands that extended from the basin of the Meuse River to the sea. ”

“ Belgian commerce embraces the whole circle of the earth, and it is in the peaceful work of culture that Germans and Belgians everywhere meet. Their cultivation of the more spiritual arts fills us with similar wonder when we behold to what a conspicuous place the poets and artists of Belgium have attained. May the trustful and friendly feelings, to which in recent times the relations of our governments bore such pleasing evidence, be ever more closely preserved! From your Majesty’s reign may happiness and blessing stream forth upon your house and upon your people! ”

“ The Belgians occupied, not only the actual territory of Belgium, but also a part of Northern France and of Rhenish Prussia. They formed a confederation of several tribes, among which the Nervians, dwelling in the provinces of Hainaut, Brabant, and Flanders, were the most important.
The Roman general, Julius Caesar, intrusted with the task of subduing the north of Gaul, attacked the Belgians in 57 B.C. The Roman army would have been routed by the Nervians in the first attack but for Caesar, who himself led the troops and saved the day. ”

“ There are no longer any political parties, there are Belgians in Belgium, and that is all; Belgians better acquainted with their country, feeling for it an impulse of passionate tenderness such as a child might feel who saw his mother suffering for the first time, and on his account. Walloons and Flemings, Catholics and Liberals or Socialists, all are more and more frankly united in all that concerns the national life and decisions for the future. ”

“ How strongly the throne of Leopold I was established among his own people was shown by the fact that during the Revolution of 1848, which nearly resulted in the overthrow of all the thrones of Europe, Belgium alone kept herself aloof from the European turmoil, and some French adventurers who had tried to cross the frontier and, with the help of some unpatriotic Belgians, to proclaim a republic on Belgian soil, were quickly disarmed in the skirmish at Risquons-Tout, near Mouscron, in West Flanders. ”

“ During the sixteenth century, and especially at the beginning of the seventeenth, the name “Belgium” is to be found in books, but seems not to have been used as a common [5] designation. As a distinctive name for a race or people, the term “Belges” became generally used at the end of the eighteenth century, its adjectival form being then “belgique” (les provinces belgiques, “the Belgian provinces”) . Between the end of the Roman occupation and the end of the eighteenth century the Belgians were successively known as “Franks,” “Lotharingi,” and “Flemings.” ”

“ The Queen was overjoyed at the thought that I was to make my home in Austria and Hungary, whence she had herself come, and where I should remember her, and at the same time further my country's glory and the King's ambitions.
I have been sacrificed for the good of Belgium, and Belgium now includes Belgians who reproach me for the gift of my youth and happiness essentially destined for their benefit! Belgians to-day regard me as a German, a Hungarian—a foreigner—and worse even than that! Alas for human gratitude! ”

“ Perhaps the fact that they have proved themselves heroes of an immortality that every race will love and bow down to in ages to come, makes these blue-coated men thus lightly refer to themselves, with that inimitable flash of the Belgian smile, as "little Belgians." ”

“ There is one striking resemblance between all periods of Belgian development. Whether in the ninth, the thirteenth, the fifteenth or the nineteenth century, they express the civilization of the time, and succeed in producing a typical example of essentially European culture, imperial under Charlemagne, communal in the Middle Ages, centralized under national princes during the Renaissance, highly industrialized and colonial in modern times. This trait must be considered when Belgium is represented as the "kernel of Europe," as combining the spirit of the North, East and South. ”

“ The Belgian people, left to themselves, would have known better how to act, and how to honour the memory of Leopold II, but this duty was delegated to those who, to this day, have wilfully and lamentably failed.
Let us consider Belgium as a human being, endowed with honour and reason, and jealous of the judgment of history and the esteem of the world; mistress of millions of Congolese and of other millions of colonial treasure. As a reasoning being, would she have considered herself free from all obligations towards the unfortunate children of the giver of these gifts? ”

“ The face of Belgium shows us many moods. Fisher villages and attractive seaside resorts give color to the long ribbon of sand that reaches for forty miles from the French to the Dutch border. To the east is the low-lying country from which Flanders—“the low land”—has its name. Beyond this expanse resembling the dike-protected regions of Holland is a naturally sterile sandy plain that Flemish farmers have by centuries of toil brought to a high state of productivity. ”

“ You have destroyed Belgium, but Belgium will rise again; and, even if fate should ordain that Belgium is to be for ever wiped away, so long as one Belgian is left alive there will be a heart to execrate you and a voice to denounce your deeds. ”

“ If, as we trust, the reader is convinced after reading this short sketch of Belgium's history that Belgian nationality is more than a vain word, and that the attitude adopted by the Belgian peoplePg 019 in August 1914, far from being an impulsive movement, was merely the result of the slow and progressive development of their national feeling throughout the ages, he will also realize that this development has received many checks, and is therefore very different from that which may be traced in the history of England, for instance, or even in that of France. ”

“ Some of the Red Caps jumped on the shoulders of the Wappers and played riding piggy-back. The winged fairies, in gold, and silk, and gauze, flew out the door as quietly as if on a cloud, or in a dream.
Now for ages the solid rivers of ice, in Switzerland, had been grinding up the rocks to make clay and sand, gravel and soil for Belgium. From the heart of France, also, there rolled down the earth, which the rain washed out of the mountains. That is the reason why the river-beds in Belgium were full of just the sort of material the Kabouters liked to play in, and of which bricks could be made. ”

“ Rather one recalls that old persistent creed, exemplified perhaps in the mysteries, now of the Greek Adonis, now of Persian Mithras, and now of the Roman priest of the Nennian lake, that it is only through the gates of sacrifice and death that the world moves on triumphant to rejuvenation and life. Is it, in truth, through the blood of a bruised and prostrate Belgium that the purple hyacinth of a rescued European civilization will spring presently from the soaked and untilled soil? ”

“ Once subdued, Belgium accepted the Roman rule and remained loyal to the Empire. Civilization was rapidly introduced; great military roads were constructed through [9] the Belgian forests and marshes, connecting the different towns, and along their course villages were built and farms developed. Tongres and Tournai became entirely Romanized cities, where splendid monuments were built; remains of these are still to be found today. Farms were laid out and country houses were erected according to Roman pattern, with such changes as were imposed by the rigors of the northern climate. ”