One of the earliest, and perhaps one of the most inspiring, of the
flashes as of lightning whereby we saw the drama of the war was that
which revealed the part played by Belgium. Has history any record of
greater heroism and greater suffering? Such courage for the right! Such
strength of soul against overwhelming odds and the criminal suddenness
of surprise! Although the world has been told by Germany’s spokesmen,
including Herr Ballin, Prince von Bülow, and even Professor Harnack
(all “honourable men,” and the last of them a churchman), that down to a
few days before the outbreak of hostilities “not one human being” among
them had “dreamt of war,” it is the fact that within a few hours of the
dispatch of Germany’s ultimatum, to Belgium, before the ink of it could
yet be dry and while the period of England’s ultimatum in defence of
Belgian integrity was still unexpired, the German legions were attacking
Liège.
It was a cowardly and contemptible assault, but what a resistance it
met with! A little peace-loving, industrial nation, infinitely small and
almost utterly untrained, compared with the giant in arms assailing
it, having no injury to avenge, no commerce to capture, no territory
to annex, desiring only to be left alone in the exercise of its
independence, stood up for six days against the invading horde, and
hurled it back.
But war is a crude and clumsy instrument for the defence of the right,
and after a flash of Belgium’s unexampled bravery we were compelled
to witness many flashes of her terrible sufferings. Liège fell before
overwhelming numbers, then Namur, Ter-monde, Brussels, Louvain, and,
last of all, Antwerp. What a spectacle of horror! The harvests of
Belgium trodden into the earth, her beautiful cities and ancient
villages given up to the flames, her historic monuments, that had
been associated with the learning and piety of centuries, razed to the
ground; and, above everything in its pathos and pain, the multitudes
of her people, old men, old women, young girls, and little children
in wooden shoes, after the unnameable atrocities of a brutalized,
infuriated, and licentious soldiery, flying before their faces as before
a plague!