THE NATION THAT THE WORLD HONORS--BELGIUM
During the world war the eyes of the world were upon Belgium and it is
quite fitting that an article be devoted to this little country whom the
world honors. Although one of the smallest of all the independent
nations yet before the invasion this little country stood eighth in
wealth and sixth in export and import trade among the nations. Texas is
more then twenty times as large as Belgium. Although not nearly all her
land is under cultivation yet she supported seven and a half million
people and before the war it is said she had no paupers.
This little country has been called the "balance wheel of the world's
trade." The city of Antwerp is said to have forty miles of quays--ahead
of New York City. When the war broke out Belgium had just completed a
ten million dollar canal and had spent eighty million dollars on her
waterways. Her commercial and industrial interests were amazing. She had
one hundred and eighty factories for the manufacture of arms alone. A
single engine factory in Liege turned out two thousand large engines
complete, annually. The zinc foundries and cycle works of this one city
are world famous.
Belgium had the cheapest railroad fare of any country on earth.
Twenty-four of her thirty-two lines were government owned. One could
purchase a third-class ticket, good for five days going anywhere over
these lines for $2.35. One could ride to his work on the railway train
twenty miles and back each day for a whole week for the insignificant
sum of thirty-seven and one-half cents. This made it possible for even
the poorest people to travel and many of them did. The city of Brussels
had two hundred passenger trains entering and leaving the two great
depots every twenty-four hours.
Belgium gave the world the greatest example of thrift ever known.
Surely, if ever a nation needed such an example, we did and do. Belgium
could live well from the crumbs that fall from our tables. Were the
American people as thrifty as the Belgians, we could save all the war
cost us, including the soldiers' bonus, in a generation. There,
everybody works, even father. While the people are poor, yet, as noted
above, it was a country without paupers and will soon be so again.
The government paid interest on savings and encouraged even the poorest
to have a savings account. Such an account could be started with one
franc and could be opened at any post office. Our thrift stamp idea came
from Belgium. The farmer or working man could buy a small plot of
ground, build a little home for his family, be insured against sickness
or accident, even though he hardly had a dollar to start with. The
government would back him and he could borrow money from the national
savings bank system.
The Belgians are said to have the best courts in existence. With a
single judge in the Supreme Court, cases are reviewed quickly while
everything is fresh in mind and witnesses and all other evidence is
easily obtained, and the decisions of the lower courts either reversed
or sustained at once without any lost motion whatever. The lower courts
are open for the settlement of all disputes. The judge cross-questions
both sides without any lawyers to interfere and the poorest wage earner
can have his wrongs righted without a cent's expense. The assistance of
an attorney is hardly ever needed and not one decision in a hundred is
appealed.
The contribution of Belgium to farming and stock raising has been
immense. Most of the soil is thin and has been used for centuries, and
yet she raises more than twice as much wheat per acre as the Dakotas and
harvests as much as $250 worth of flax per acre. A few centuries ago the
district between Antwerp and Ghent was a barren moor called Weasland.
Today every inch of this land is cultivated and is dotted by some of the
finest farms in Belgium. This entire sandy district was covered,
"cartload by cartload, spadeful by spadeful with good soil brought from
elsewhere." It is now like a great flower garden and in fact much of it
is flower beds. The city of Ghent is known as the flower city of Europe,
there being a hundred nursery gardens and half as many horticultural
establishments in the suburbs of this one city.
A marvelous thing about Belgian agriculture is that they rotate the soil
rather than the crops. Their methods of intensive farming are so
wonderful that if North and South Dakota could be farmed as is Belgian
soil, nearly all the people in the United States could move to these two
states and be fed. Belgium is a land of very small farms and it is said
that the poorest agricultural laborer has a better chance to become a
land owner than in most any other country. Until auto trucks made their
appearance the great drays of London and New York were drawn by Belgian
horses. Belgian stallions often take the blue ribbons at our great
state fairs and our farmers have found that the Belgian breeds of stock
are second to none. Even Belgian hares are most prolific and most
profitable of any breed of rabbits in this country today.
The contribution in architecture of this little country to the world has
been so great and her churches and public buildings so stately that
Belgium has been called, "The Jewel box of Europe." Of course, many of
her great cathedrals and public buildings were damaged or destroyed, but
they will, in a large measure, at least, be restored.
The art of Belgian painters is world famous and graces the finest
galleries in both Europe and America. Many of the paintings of Rubens
and other master artists are almost priceless. As lace makers the women
of Belgium are famous the world around. From early morning until late at
night these toilers sit in their low chairs and the skill with which
they shoot the little thread-bobbins back and forth across the cushions
is indescribable. Neither men nor women in Belgium are overly much given
to amusements. They work with all their might, but when the national
holidays come they abandon themselves to the amusements for the moment
and have a most enjoyable time.
While many are illiterate, the Belgians are giving much attention to
schools these times. Even while they were guests of France, with their
government located at Havre, they established twenty-four schools for
the children and a single woman had more than five thousand pupils under
her care and direction. They also established large schools at that
place for disabled soldiers and many of them became not only skilled
workers, but inventors. One of these disabled men invented a process to
make artificial limbs out of waste paper and it is said that these limbs
are the best made. Many of these legless soldiers with artificial limbs
can walk so well that one would never imagine that they had been
wounded.
Providence seems to have made Belgium the great battlefield of Europe.
Nearly every great general of European history has fought on Belgian
soil. When the Spaniards looted Belgian cities and set up the
inquisition it seemed as though the very imps of the lower regions were
turned loose. I have looked upon many of the instruments of torture that
can still be seen in European museums and they were even more terrible
than anything used in the late war. Again and again has Belgian soil
been drenched with blood. Only a little more than one hundred years ago
the hosts of Napoleon and Wellington decided the destiny of nations at
the battle of Waterloo.
Here was this great hive of industry, with the wheels of her factories
humming and her people happy, industrious and contented up to that
fateful day in August, 1914. No people were more loyal to their ideals,
more trustful of others or more anxious to serve humanity than these
honest-hearted, hard-working people. They felt secure, for the treaty
which protected them had been signed by all the nations around them.
This treaty had been held sacred for more than eighty years and was to
last as long as time. It had held them secure during the great crisis of
1870-1871 and when the war cloud gathered in Austria and Servia they
felt secure.
Soon, however, it became plain that Germany had been planning for years
to crush this little country like an egg shell. Four double-track lines
of railway had been built up to the Belgian border. Miles of concrete
platforms had been built, but no suspicions had been aroused. When the
enemy started across Belgium he had better maps of the country than any
Belgian had ever seen. At once many Germans in Belgium left their homes
silently and the surprise of Belgian neighbors can be better imagined
than described when they saw their old friends coming back with the
enemy's army. They had been spies all these years.
When the great siege guns were brought from their hiding places in the
Krupp factories into Belgium, the foundations for them were already
there. These guns were so heavy that the London Times stated that it
took thirteen traction engines to pull a single one of them. They threw
shells that weighed almost a ton twenty miles and a single one of them
would destroy a building as large as our own national capital building
in Washington. So accurately had these foundations been placed that
scarcely a single shell was wasted.
It is said that years ago some so-called German university men asked the
Belgian Government for permission to study the geology of their country.
This permission was granted freely. But these were mostly military men
and spent months investigating and surveying and marking certain places.
Once more these men came to the Belgian Government stating that they
wished to study the formation of rocks and soil which would necessitate
digging into the earth and as they did not wish to be bothered by the
public, asked permission to build barricades around the places where
they worked. Their request was granted instantly and by this means they
built the foundations for these great siege guns.
Finally the fateful day came. Germany told Belgium that she intended
going across her territory anyway and if she would allow this to be done
peaceably she would pay her double price for everything destroyed; that
it would be to her best interests to allow this and that she might have
twelve hours to think it over. In the darkest hours of the war, when it
seemed that the Germans would be victorious, I heard the Belgian
minister in Washington say in an address: "Yes, they gave us twelve
hours to decide, but they gave us eleven hours and fifty-nine minutes
too much time." As long as time, it will be remembered to the glory of
Belgium that she told Germany instantly to stay upon her own territory;
that the world would never say that Belgium went back upon her word;
that if war came she would remain neutral as in the treaty she had
agreed to do. The minister referred to above also said in this darkest
hour: "They now have all but three hundred square miles of our
territory, but what will it profit a man though he gain the whole world
and lose his own soul.' We have lost our property, but we have saved our
soul, and if it were to do over again we would do exactly the same
thing."
Brave little Belgium! For four and one half years she stood bleeding and
with her head bowed in sorrow! Her homes were destroyed, her old men and
women shot down like dogs, her women outraged, her youths and maidens
enslaved, her little children misused, but Belgium still lives, and
always will live in the hearts of men and women wherever civilization is
known! Her King and Queen were brave and heroic through all those
horrible times; her church leaders could not be bought or sold, and her
common people were true as steel. As a nation she blundered in days
agone, but what nation has not made mistakes? Belgium saved democracy
for a thousand years and is today the nation that the whole world
honors.