[Illustration: THE TOWN HALL, LOUVAIN
Undamaged by war, this exquisite edifice, “more an encrusted casket
than a building,” rears its delicate pinnacles above a scene of
destruction]
Entered as second-class matter March 10, 1913, at the postoffice at New
York, N. Y., under the act of March 3, 1879. Copyright, 1920, by The
Mentor Association, Inc.
Before the windows of my cottage, facing the level beach of La Panne,
there came very often in the summer of 1913 a monarch, tall and blond,
and nearly always he was the center of a joyous group of youths and
children. Three of the group were his sons and his daughter; six slim
youngsters called the Emperor of Austria grandfather. During the long
summer afternoons the friends laboriously erected and recklessly
demolished sand forts and barricades amid the tufted dunes, while
laughter and the clamor of mimic assault disturbed the peace of the
strand. Sometimes I wished that the children of the King of Belgium
and their cousins, the grandchildren of the Austrian emperor, would
find another place to play their war games! I could not know that
before the year was out three of these care-free companions would
be playing the game in earnest--one of them in the ranks of the
invaders.… That fishing sloops of La Panne, lying aslant on the beach
or spreading their deep-hued sails to the North Sea wind, would within
a twelve-month be consumed by monsters of the deep. That soon the wide
smooth shore would be a tenting-ground for Belgian soldiers swept back
from Antwerp. That neighbor villages would be fenced with arms. That
only a few square miles of his country would be left to the dauntless
King of the Belgians.
[Illustration: ON THE WAY TO BRUGES
This canal scene is typical of the water routes that connect Bruges
with the seaports of Zee-Brugge and Ostend]
_On Belgian Roads_
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.
South of Flanders and Brabant, wide sea-freshened vistas give way to
murky landscapes and cities that bristle with the spires of industry.
Here, settlements of coal miners, steel workers, glass makers, cotton
spinners, fill the foreground of the scene. Most of the factory people
belong to the robust and spirited race of the Walloons, who live near
the eastern and southern frontiers. Their Celtic ancestors occupied
the valley of the Meuse (meuz) long before the Christian era. Among
themselves they speak a dialect bequeathed by the Romans. Officially
their language is French, just as the Flemish tongue, of “Low Country”
origin, is the recognized language of the Belgians of the north.
[Illustration: Copyright, Underwood & Underwood