Belgian frontier

“ The heart of modern Germany is the industrial world of the Rhineland and Westphalia. The Belgian frontier and the Belgian tariff-wall rob this region of its natural outlet at Antwerp, yet the contract expressly forbids us to right this economic and geographical wrong by uniting the sea-port to its hinterland.
“The chief need of modern Germany is a source of raw produce and a market for her finished products in the tropical zone. Belgium has staked out for herself the one important region in Africa which was not already occupied by France or Great Britain. ”

“ Its population, drawn from both elements, has been the alternate prey of French and German powers. But all of Belgium’s [30] troubled history has been affected by the shape of the land. The only frontier with which the nation has been supplied by nature is the sea on the west. On the other three sides land features merge gradually with the main types in their neighborhood. Within Belgian territory, the lowlands of northern Europe join with the outliers of the uplifts of central Europe and their extension into France. Nowhere is the break sharp. ”

“ He suggests that we take the early morning train across the Belgian frontier."
"Why go to Belgium?"
"All railroad lines leading into France have been seized by German soldiers. Passenger traffic has been cut off, mother," explained Hal. "All trains are being used for the movement of troops."
"Yes, Mrs. Paine," continued Chester, "we shall have to go through Belgium. Even now thousands of the Kaiser's best troops are marching upon the French frontier, and fighting is only a question of hours." ”

“ Topographically, the sector which the Belgian Army has had to organise and defend is certainly one of the worst. This will be denied neither by the British units which this year occupied the Nieuport district nor by the French units linked up with the Belgians near Boesinghe and Steenstraat. Several descriptions have been written of the peculiar appearance presented by this low-lying, perfectly flat, region between the Franco-Belgian frontier, the sea coast and the Yser, and known as the "Veurne-Ambacht." ”

“ It is clear now that while one part of the great invading host took the direct route from Liége towards the Sambre, the other made a detour by way of Brussels to meet the Belgian army. The object was to strike towards the three great international roads running to Paris from Belgium. The most westerly of these great routes passes from Brussels through Mons and Valenciennes; the next through Charleroi and the French frontier fortress of Maubeuge; the third along the valley of the Meuse through Namur, past Dinant, and away to Laon. ”

“ The Belgians threaten their northern communications. The farther the Germans push north, to Ghent or Ostend, the more danger that their lines can be cut. All depends whether this German northern advance is merely an army of occupation, to subdue Belgium, or the main army of advance upon France. In the latter case, it will not now be stopped this side of the frontier.
Ostend, Saturday night.
To-day the German flood has advanced with extraordinary rapidity. The Belgian army is for the moment off the board. At express speed and with clockwork regularity the country is being occupied. ”

“ They live in their tiny quarters with economy and industry; the most densely populous community in Europe, and one of the most prosperous. Around their borders rises the sullen murmur of threatening armies and hostile dynasties; but Belgium is free from menace, and their sunshine of peace is without a cloud. It is of course conceivable that in the great struggle which seems impending, the Belgian nation may suddenly vanish from the map, and become but a memory in the minds of a future generation ”

“ The Limburg province, annexed to Holland in 1839, the province which gave the retreating enemy unlawful refuge in 1918, a rank violation of Dutch neutrality, is apparently not to be restored to Belgium. Even the right, vital to the safety and welfare of Belgium, the right of unimpeded navigation of the Scheldt between Antwerp and the sea, has not yet been conceded. And the raw material that is indispensable if Belgian industry is to be revived is withheld; the Allies, however, are quite willing to flood the country with manufactured articles. ”

“ The commerce of Antwerp ceased to threaten the Dutch ports, the Scheldt was open, the commercial blockade lifted at last, and Belgian trade able to regain its former importance after two centuries of stagnation. Belgium must benefit from the association with a strong maritime Power, possessing rich colonies and a limitless capacity for expansion. Holland's prosperity, on the other hand, must be largely increased through the agricultural and industrial resources of the Southern provinces. ”

“ This little suburb enjoys all the privileges of extraterritoriality, and even the French Minister to Belgium goes through the motions of being accredited to a foreign Government in his country. The cars of the various Legations go buzzing around among the French and Belgian and British cars. The streets are full of troops of the three nations, while some twenty transports ride at anchor in the open roadstead. Fresh troops from England are arriving constantly, and march singing through the town to the camps outside, whence they are sent to the front. ”

“ Traveling the roads of Belgium on foot or by steam tram, by slothful barge, or by the very efficient railways of the Belgian Government, we come upon many a picture of odd-fashioned roofs and mirroring water-streets, of city squares and gilded cornices, of farm cots scattered like sheep across the downs, of corpulent windmills busy at their grinding, of canal-boats moving among the flat Flemish fields, of soil-stained men and women tending crops of sugar-beets, flax and grains. ”

“ With the acquisition of a colony eighty times as large as the kingdom itself, Belgium became the dazzled possessor of a treasure land of mines, arable acres and profitable forests. Rail and water transportation were promoted by Belgian and foreign companies, eager to enjoy the rich opportunities of the African colony, and hundreds of trading-houses sprang up to handle the Congo’s yield of palm oils, copal, rubber, cocoa, copper, gold, diamonds and ivory. ”

“ History will show that Belgians have courage as their native right, for only the brave could have survived. The southeastern part of Belgium is a series of rock plains, and if these plains have been her good fortune in times of peace, they have furnished the battlefields of Western Europe for two thousand years. Northern France and Western Germany are rough, jagged and wooded, but the Belgian plains were ideal battlefields. For this reason the generals of Germany and of France have usually met and struggled for the mastery on these wide Belgian plains. ”

“ On that stirring day in Brussels, which witnessed the departure of the King to join his troops at the front, the sentiment uppermost was in truth “faith in the nation’s destinies.” Great Britain had sent her ultimatum to Berlin in defence of Belgian rights. Not merely reservists called to the colours, but volunteers in multitudes were anxious to take up arms. Crowds besieged the recruiting offices. The public feeling in the Belgian capital reflected the public feeling everywhere. ”

“ The fewer Belgians there are in German hands, the better it is. The Belgians whose ability is the most useful, are considered useful by the Germans for the latter's sake. Must it not be a terrible source of anxiety for these Belgians to think that all the work they manage to do is directly or indirectly done for Germany? It is not astonishing that she wants to restore 'business, as usual' in Belgium, and that in many cases she has tried to force the Belgian workers to earn for her. ”

“ Belgium had now a sovereign who was strong, both physically and mentally. He entered the Senate while still Duc de Brabant, and was soon recognized as a thinker and orator. But before all else, he was an able man of business. He had the foresight and breadth of view of a statesman, with the financial ability and power to handle men that belong to a captain of industry. He was interested in the construction of roads and tramway lines, in the extension of the canal system, and in measures for restoring Antwerp and Bruges, and other Belgian towns to their ancient position as queens of commerce. ”

“ I ask you, men of Belgium, to look at those whom the State employs to-day. Eight hundred thousand Germans are under State control to make good the works they have wantonly destroyed. They may repair the bridges and the highways, but there are broken hearts they cannot heal, and—there are many empty chairs in Belgian homes. ”

“ For, in truth, our soldiers are all saviours. A first time, at Liège, they saved France; a second time, in Flanders, they arrested the advance of the enemy upon Calais. France and [372] England know it, and Belgium stands before the entire world a nation of heroes.
“Never before in my life did I feel so proud to be a Belgian as when, on the platform of French stations, and halting awhile in Paris, and visiting London, I witnessed the enthusiastic admiration our Allies feel for the heroism of our army.... ”

“ Belgium is divided into provinces, these provinces are: Antwerp, Brabant, Western Flanders, Eastern Flanders, Hainaut, Liège, Limburg, Luxemburg, Namur. It is the prerogative of law, if there is any reason, to divide the territory into a larger number of provinces. Colonies, possessions beyond the seas or protectorates which Belgium may acquire, are governed by particular laws. The Belgian forces appointed for their defense can only be recruited by voluntary enlistment. ”

“ Then Belgium was practically occupied territory. While Belgium pretended neutrality and friendship toward Germany, it was secretly planning for her defeat in a war which was considered unavoidable. The poor Belgian people, however, must suffer because of the large ambitions of King Leopold of Congo fame and of a broken-down diplomacy. ”

“ The German Government are ready for any compact with Belgium which can be reconciled with their conflicts with France. Germany once more gives her solemn assurance that it is not her intention to appropriate Belgian territory to herself and that such an intention is far from her thoughts. Germany is still ready to evacuate Belgium as soon as the state of war will allow her to do so. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Because it is needful to insure our credit on sea and our military and economic situation for the future in face of England, because the Belgian territory, which is of the greatest economic importance, is closely linked to our principal industrial territory, Belgium must be subjected to the legislation of the Empire in monetary, financial and postal matters. ”

“ Those farmlands which Lieutenant Herrmann tells me you saw, coming up from Lille to Brussels, were planted by German soldiers and in the spring they will be harvested by our soldiers. Belgium has not been devastated, and its condition has been grievously misstated, as you have seen. You must remember that the armies have passed back and forth across it—German, Belgian, English, and French, but I think you have seen that only in the paths of these armies has the countryside suffered. Where engagements were not fought or shots fired, Belgium is as it was. ”

“ Germany is not coming as an enemy into Belgium; it is only through the force of circumstances that she has had, owing to the military measures of France, to take the grave decision of entering Belgium and occupying Liège as a base for her further military operations. Now that the Belgian army has upheld the honour of its arms by its heroic resistance to a very superior force, the German Government beg the King of the Belgians and the Belgian Government to spare Belgium further horrors of war. ”

“ Their sufferings are majestic in simple heroism and uncomplaining endurance. So majestic in proportion ought the relief to be. The Belgian people are wards of the world. In the circumstances the Belgian people are special wards of the one great country that is secure in its peace and that by its natural instincts of human sympathy and love of freedom is best suited to do the work that should be done for Belgium. ”

“ There’s one place at the Holland town of Sittard where the gap can’t be much more than four miles, so you see how easy it would be for us to run across that neck, and land in Belgium.”
“With this lightning car,” observed Giraffe, “we’d hit the border, give one grand splurge, and then bring up on Belgian soil.”
“Limberg, you said, didn’t you, Allan?” remarked Bumpus; “I guess I know now where that strong cheese comes from. I only hope we don’t strike any factories on the way. It always makes me feel faint, you know.” ”

“ French rule; and Dutch rule. For more than a century most of Europe’s battles were fought on Belgian soil. “The Netherlands,” a writer declared in 1642, “have been for many years the very cock-pit of Christendom, the school of arms and rendezvous of adventurous spirits.”
The battledore of war drove Belgium, the shuttlecock, to Spain, then to Austria, to France, and back to Austria again. At the end of the French Revolution all the provinces, including Liège, became part of France. Under the Republic and during the reign of Napoleon I., Belgium enjoyed a period of comparative peace. ”