Belgians

“ I have been gratified to recognize in these spontaneous manifestations the unanimous accord of the populations. On my part, I have never made any distinctions between Belgians; all are devoted to their country, and I comprise them in one common affection. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ The Great Powers, when they allowed the Belgians to have their own way and choose a King for themselves, took Belgium under their protection, and made it a "neutral state"—that is to say, a country which may not be attacked or entered by the armies of other nations which are fighting each other, and which is not permitted to make war on other countries. This was a great blessing for the Belgians, because their country is so small and weak, and so many battles used to be fought in it that it was called "the cock-pit of Europe." ”

“ The Belgians have more of the character of the French or the Germans than of the Dutch; they are as industrious, ingenious, and mercantile as the Dutch; but they are more chivalric in their traditions; which feeling is kept alive by their splendid mediæval monuments, by their noble history, and by the Catholic religion; and, however science, and the progress of general knowledge, may soften down the asperities which separate neighbouring peoples, no nation, capable of good, willingly parts from its traditions. ”

“ For the Belgian soldiers no longer sang, or made merry in the evening. A young Brussels corporal in our party suddenly broke into sobbing when he heard the chorus of "Tipperary" float over the channel from a transport of untried British lads. The Belgians are a race of children whose feelings have been hurt. The pathos of the Belgian army is like the pathos of an orphan-asylum: it is unconscious.
They are very lonely, the loneliest men I have known. Back of the fighting Frenchman, you sense the gardens and fields of France, the strong, victorious national will. ”

“ We all rise to the glorification of suffering little Belgium. Whatever brief we may hold for her though, we ought not to picture even her peasant people as a mild, meek and inoffensive lot. That isn't the sort of stuff out of which her dogged and continuing resistance was wrought. That isn't the mettle which for two weeks stopped up the German tide before the Liege forts, giving the allies two weeks to mobilize, and all they had asked the Belgians for was two or three days of grace. ”

“ If evidence be desired of the freedom of the Belgians, it is to be found in the fact that there is nowhere to be seen, as we are on all hands assured, a more contented, virtuous, and generally comfortable population than that engaged in the cultivation of her fields. ”

“ Though Belgium is a neutral state, living under the protection of the Great Powers of Europe, the Belgians are afraid that some day, if these Powers quarrel with each other and begin to fight, armies may march into their country and turn it once more into a battle-field; or perhaps one of the Powers may wish to take a part of Belgium, or some Belgian town, such as Antwerp, and rule over it. So this little kingdom must have an army to defend itself till some powerful nation comes to help it. ”

“ It must be remembered that the Belgians are an industrious people and that the geographical position of the country is highly favorable. But the political union of all the provinces, peace, and a good administration contributed largely to the revival of the nation. The political work of the Burgundian dukes brought about the unification of coinage, the free relations between the different principalities, the order and safety necessary for the development of trade and industry. ”

“ The inhabitants of Belgium are in general, from all that I can hear or see, not at all pleased with the present order of things, and they much lament the being severed from France. The two people, the Belgians and Hollanders, do not seem to amalgamate; and the former, though they render ample justice to the moderation, good sense, and beneficent intentions of the present monarch, who is personally respected by every one, yet do not disguise their wish to be reunited to France and do not hesitate to avow their attachment to the Emperor Napoleon. ”

“ People who are leading a quiet life and who enjoy the blessings of an autonomous Government will perhaps not appreciate the importance which the Belgians attach, at the present moment, to these patriotic manifestations. ”

“ The Belgians, you see, are so fond of hoisting flags and hearing bands of music on every possible occasion that [87] they can't help doing it even when there is really nothing to get excited about.
And now, having taken this peep at Belgium, we shall leave these adventurers sailing away to their Congo, and, hoping they will find wisdom to steer wisely (in more ways than one) and so avoid shipwreck, wish them bon voyage. ”

“ The Belgians have always had a tremendous city patriotism and have taken more pride in their municipal achievements than any people on earth, and it must hurt them more than it could possibly hurt any other people. ”

“ The Belgians halted between two opinions, and were lost. Most of them were Catholics, which made it easier for them to submit to Philip. But the most industrious of the population fled, and the trade and manufactures which had made their country prosperous went to Holland. After that, a great historian says, "the Flemish and Brabantine cities were mere dens of thieves and beggars."
The Spaniards ruled over Belgium, which was now called the "Spanish Netherlands," till a daughter of Philip's, Isabella by name, married an Austrian Archduke called Albert. They received Belgium as a wedding-gift. ”

“ The real difficulty is that few Belgians seem capable of thinking anything beyond rubber on the one hand, and the native as a servile labourer on the other. Colonial opinion in Belgium and on the Congo itself appears to be firmly wedded to this restricted view of colonial expansion. ”

“ When the Revolution of the Belgians against Austrian rule broke out in 1789, the Elector Frederick-William of Prussia tried in vain to obtain from the other powers, England and Holland, the recognition of the Belgian Republic. He proposed that they should recognize the independence of Belgium and compel the Belgians “to establish a firm, strong constitution, in conformity with the interests of the Allies...; to create, subject to the advice of the Allies, a respectable military state that would inspire confidence ”

“ It has enabled numerous Belgians, who were smothering within their frontiers, to prove their value in a much broader sphere, where territorial, political, and diplomatic conditions permitted some display of their inborn qualities, and to reveal themselves first-class pioneers, soldiers, and administrators. ”

“ The sovereigns ruled with wise protection of commerce and manufactures, and strove to build up the country. They were patrons of art, and by their influence Rubens was induced to make his home in Flanders.
Until the peace of Utrecht, in 1713, Spain continued to hold Belgium, on whose devoted soil [100] many a battle was fought. Sometimes Dutch and Spaniards were the combatants, again Belgians fought off the French. Through the whole second half of the seventeenth century Belgium was the battlefield on which Europe strove against the ambition of Louis XIV, and again it was laid waste. ”

“ impossible to follow their rapid utterance, or comprehend much of the purport of what they said—yet French, in the mouths of Frenchmen, or Belgians (I was not then sensible of the horrors of the Belgian accent) was as music to my ears. One of these gentlemen presently discerned me to be an Englishman—no doubt from the fashion in which I addressed the waiter; for I would persist in speaking French in my execrable South-of-England style, though the man understood English. The gentleman, after looking towards me once or twice, politely accosted me in very good English; ”

“ By the afternoon of Wednesday, 5th August, the Belgians held in strength the line of the south-eastern forts, and cavalry covered the gap between the most northerly of these forts and the Dutch border. The army was under the command of General Leman, [194] an officer of Engineers, who had worked under Brialmont. He was a grave, silent man, more than sixty years of age, and was highly respected by his fellow-countrymen. Every Belgian in the trenches was a patriot, eager to defend his country, his wife, children, and home with his life. ”

“ Disdained by their neighbour of the North, governed by a prince whose confidence they do not possess, hindered in the exercise of their worship, and, as they say, in the enjoyment of their liberties, overburdened with taxes, having but a share in the National Representation disproportionate to the population of the South, the Belgians ask themselves whether they have a country, and are restless in a painful situation, the outcome of which they seek vainly to discover [12] .
From an intercepted letter from Louvain, dated July 30, 1829 [12] :
What does one see? ”

“ 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.” ”

“ The situation of the Belgian civilian population became now very peculiar. The Belgian government, which had left Antwerp together with the King, had accepted the hospitality of the French government at Havre; the King and Queen were with the troops on the Yser. There remained in Belgium, as representatives of the national power, the burgomasters or mayors of the various towns, the parish priests, and the bishops. They were to be the leaders of the oppressed population. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”