depreciated German currency which the Allies did not take over, and her
hopes for full priority on the account of restoration and reparation
were not entirely fulfilled. Indeed, it soon became apparent that the
general bill for reparation would far exceed the ability of Germany to
pay, and that there were not resources enough in all Germany to meet
that restoration of invaded territory upon which President Wilson had
declared “the whole world was agreed.” Belgium had suffered less than
France by the destruction of war itself, for her territory, save in
the case of the Meuse fortresses and the battle zone in Flanders, had
not been fought over; but the German occupation which she had borne
in equal measure was relatively far more serious, for it affected the
whole country and not merely a part, and it produced stagnation of
industry and cessation of commerce on a scale that destroyed enterprise
and left idleness as well as poverty in its stead.
In territorial matters Belgium’s desires, save for a small correction
of the German frontier, concerned neutral powers, Holland and
Luxemburg, which were not members of the Peace Conference and not
subject to its jurisdiction. The most that the Conference could do
was to help in the adjustment of Belgium’s claims, and Belgium feels
strongly that the Conference did not help enough.
Finally, Belgium was dissatisfied with her whole position at the
Conference. During the war she had acted as one of the Allies and had
her representation in the Allied councils. At Paris she was only a
small power, limited to three delegates--at first even to two--and
excluded from the guiding and deciding group of the Five Great Powers.
Even the decisions which directly concerned her were taken by the
Council of Ten or the Council of Four. She was outside, while Italy
and Japan were inside. Individually her delegates sat on important
committees, but there were times when Belgium must have felt far
removed from the central tasks of the Conference, in the outer limbo
occupied by Liberia, Panama, and Siam. A Belgian told the story of an
officer who had lost both legs. “You will always be a hero,” said a
consoling friend. “No,” replied the officer, “I shall be a hero for
a year and a cripple for the rest of my life.” Belgium felt that the
days of her position as a hero were over. You will recall Mr. Dooley on
Lieutenant Hobson: “I’m a hero,” said the Lieutenant. “Are ye, faith?”
said Admiral Dewey, “Well, I can’t do anything f’r ye in that line. All
th’ hero jobs on this boat is compitintly filled be mesilf.”
Let us call to mind so much of Belgium’s history as is necessary to
approach her modern problems. Belgium as a separate and independent
state has existed only since 1830, but her national history goes back
into the Middle Ages. Easy of access from both the Rhine and the
north of France, the territory of modern Belgium has always been a
highroad of peoples, for migration, commerce, and war, and the natural
meeting-point of races and civilizations from north and south. It
formed a part of the great middle kingdom created between France and
Germany by the partition of the Frankish empire in the ninth century,
and with the break-up of the middle kingdom it became a natural object
of ambition from both sides. The various feudal principalities which
shared this territory in the Middle Ages divided their allegiance
between the king of France and the German emperor; and it was not till
the fifteenth century that the rise of a new middle kingdom under the
dukes of Burgundy brought the region of the Netherlands, northern as
well as southern, under a single hand and made them for practical
purposes independent of France and Germany. Enlarged toward the east by
the Emperor Charles V in the sixteenth century, the territories of the
Netherlands comprised seventeen provinces and included substantially
what is now Holland and Belgium.
By the marriage of Mary, heiress of Burgundy, to Maximilian of Austria
in 1477 the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands passed to the house
of Hapsburg, and thus to their grandson, the Emperor Charles V. Upon
the division of his possessions in 1556 they went with Spain to the
so-called Spanish branch of the family, represented by Philip II.
Religious and political reasons led to the great revolt against Philip
II in 1568, a movement in which the whole seventeen provinces joined.
The skilful policy of Philip’s general, Alexander Farnese, succeeded in
detaching the southern provinces, which had remained for the most part
Catholic, from the Protestant, or United, Netherlands of the north, and
from 1579 on the southern provinces led a separate existence under
Spanish rule, being generally known as the Spanish Netherlands. In this
period they lost considerable territory on the north to the Dutch and
on the south to the French.
Upon the division of the Spanish dominions by the treaty of Utrecht in
1713, the Spanish Netherlands were in the following year transferred
to Austria, and were known as the Austrian Netherlands until their
conquest by the armies of the French Revolution in 1794. They were then
incorporated with France (1795) and organized into nine departments, a
state of affairs which lasted until 1814.
By the Congress of Vienna in 1815 the northern and the southern
Netherlands were reunited, under the rule of a king of the house
of Nassau. After a separation of one hundred and thirty-five years
the union proved unsatisfactory to the southern population. Marked
differences of religion, economic interest, and language produced
friction from the start, which was aggravated by the exclusive policy
of the Dutch, who, though a minority, monopolized the higher offices
and enforced the use of the Dutch language. The revolutionary movement
of 1830 kindled a revolt in the southern provinces, and a separate
government was organized under a constitutional monarch, Leopold of
Saxe-Coburg. The separation was declared “final and irrevocable” by
a convention of representatives of the five Great Powers meeting in
London in 1831, and the treaty was accepted by Holland in 1839. The
boundaries of the new kingdom were, as we shall see, drawn in a manner
quite unsatisfactory to the Belgians.
The treaty of 1839 guaranteed the independence and the neutrality of
Belgium, while at the same time it placed restrictions on the new
state. By Article VII it was provided that
Belgium ... shall form an independent and perpetually neutral state.
It shall be bound to observe the same neutrality toward all other
states.
It will thus be seen that, while the roots of Belgian nationality
lie deep in the past, the modern state was established in a somewhat
artificial form, its boundaries drawn and its international status
fixed by the Powers, not by Belgium itself. Its frontiers are in no
direction ‘natural’ frontiers. At the same time Belgium is dependent
in the closest way upon the outside world. It possesses the densest
population of any country in Europe--the same number of inhabitants
as the state of Pennsylvania, with one-fourth the area. In spite of a
highly intensive cultivation, the soil is unable to produce sufficient
food, so that sixty per cent of the consumption of cereals is imported.
For this large importation Belgium is unable to pay in minerals, its
only considerable underground resource being coal, of which there has
been no surplus for export since 1910. It must consequently pay for
its imports by exports of manufactured products, for which the raw
materials are likewise for the most part imported.
Belgium is thus a highly industrialized country, with a large
manufacturing population. Its principal industries are iron furnaces
and rolling mills, zinc works, machinery, arms, and tools; textiles,
especially cotton goods; glass, cement, and ceramic wares; leather; and
chemical products. Commerce is also of the highest importance in the
economic life of Belgium. She requires foreign imports of raw materials
and foreign markets for her manufactured articles. She has a very
large transit trade, en route to and from Germany and northern France.
In volume of trade Antwerp is one of the greatest of European ports,
abreast of Hamburg and London. The system of railways and canals is
elaborate, with the highest per capita mileage in Europe.
* * * * *
Of the territorial adjustments desired by Belgium, the least
considerable concerned her Prussian frontier. Belgium (or at that
time the Belgian part of Holland) and Prussia became neighbors in
1815, in consequence of the Prussian annexations on the left bank of
the Rhine. The boundary then drawn was not based upon considerations
of language or history, still less upon any expressed desire of the
inhabitants, but was fixed primarily so as to give Prussia a certain
number of people as compensation for her failure to receive Saxony.
She thus acquired the eastern part of the lands of the abbey of
Stavelot-Malmedy; the territory of St. Vith, which had belonged to
Luxemburg; and a portion of Limburg in the region of Eupen. This land
was largely hill and forest, of no great economic value, and it was
used by Prussia chiefly for military purposes. Strategic railroads, of
little importance in time of peace, were constructed along the Belgian
and Luxemburg frontiers, and the great military camp of Elsenborn was
built in this very region to serve for the concentration of troops
against the invasion of Belgium. Liège, Belgium’s great industrial
center, was only eighteen miles from the German border, and the taking
of Liège in 1914 opened up the whole valley of the Meuse.
Belgium asked a minimum of protection for the future. It was plain that
such protection could not come from any considerable advance of the
frontier on the part of so small a state, but must be found chiefly
in the demilitarization of the Left Bank and in measures for general
peace. At least, however, Belgium might ask control over some of the
military railroads and over the camp of Elsenborn.
If purely strategic arguments had prevailed, they would have carried
the Belgian frontier forward to the Rhine or to the mountain range
of the Eiffel. Within the narrower limits chosen, the strategic
considerations were reënforced by others: the economic orientation of
this region toward Belgium rather than toward Germany; the historic
connection before 1815; and the opportunity for reparation, for this
sparsely peopled territory was rich in forests, which might serve to
replace the Belgian forests which had been systematically destroyed by
Germany during the war, leaving a frontier line which can be followed
for miles by the standing timber on the German side and its absence on
the Belgian. The linguistic line was less sharp. German was spoken in
certain districts on the Belgian side; while, in spite of a century of
Germanization, Walloon still prevailed in Malmedy and the neighboring
Prussian villages. Indeed, Malmedy was in many ways like a Belgian
town, and German troops in 1914 are said to have begun pillaging here
under the impression that they were already in Belgium.
The actual wishes of the population in the ceded districts had not
been expressed, so it was provided in the treaty that during the six
months after its coming into force the Belgian authorities should
open registers in which the inhabitants might record a desire to have
any part of the ceded territory remain under German sovereignty, the
results to be passed upon by the League of Nations. It would have been
more consistent with the rest of the treaty if the League had also
been entrusted with securing the original expression of opinion. The
territory transferred by the treaty comprised 376 square miles with a
population of 61,000, constituting the Kreise of Malmedy and Eupen,
whose administrative limits were preserved in order to interfere as
little as possible with local conditions.[11]
The treaty also settled an old controversy in this region respecting
the district of Moresnet, disputed between Belgium (until 1839 Holland)
and Prussia since 1815, when two inconsistent boundary lines of the
treaty of Vienna left in doubt the sovereignty over a triangular area
of about 900 acres which contained the valuable zinc mine of Vieille
Montagne. Neither side would yield, and a convention of 1816 which
provided for the neutralization of the area under a _condominium_ or
joint administration lasted until the war. With the exhaustion of the
mine the district has declined in importance, but the anomaly needed
clearing up, as the Germans had frequently declared. The treaty assigns
the disputed territory to Belgium, and adds a square mile or so in
Prussian Moresnet, comprising the domanial and communal woods.[12]
Far more important for Belgium was the question of her relations with
another eastern neighbor, the duchy of Luxemburg. An integral part
of the southern Netherlands until the French Revolution, Luxemburg
had in 1815 been made into a grand duchy and handed over to the king
of Holland. It revolted with Belgium in 1830 and sent members to the
Belgian Parliament, but on the final separation of Belgium and Holland
in 1839 it was divided, the western or Walloon portion going to
Belgium, and the eastern or German-speaking portion continuing as the
grand duchy. The dynastic union with Holland came to an end in 1890,
when a divergence in the laws of succession established a separate line
of grand dukes.
The neutrality of Luxemburg was specially and perpetually guaranteed
by the Powers, Prussia included, in 1867; but the state was not in
every respect independent. Cut off from its Belgian markets by the
separation of 1839, it entered three years later the German Zollverein,
of which it continued a member until the close of the World War. Its
railroads also passed under German control in 1871, with a proviso that
they should not be used for military purposes. They were nevertheless
extended and double-tracked in the direction of France and Belgium,
for military reasons which became clearly apparent in 1914. August 1
of that year the German occupation of Luxemburg began, and the country
remained a base of military operations throughout the war. Unlike
Belgium, Luxemburg made no resistance. Indeed, its government was
considered very friendly to Germany--_une dynastie boche_, the French
called it--and the final victory of the Allies was followed January 15
by the abdication of the grand duchess, Marie Adelheid, in favor of her
sister Charlotte.
It was plain that the Allies, Belgium and France most of all, could
not permit a return of Luxemburg to German control; and it was equally
plain that, whatever political independence the grand duchy retained,
it could not stand economically alone. With but 260,000 people and 1000
square miles of territory, it was not large enough for that; and its
principal industry, iron, needed the coal and the markets of adjacent
lands. Belgium felt that Luxemburg would naturally turn to her. The
people were Catholic; the language of government and of the educated
classes was French; there were strong ties of tradition and sentiment
between the two countries. Belgium counted, counted too confidently, on
the result. She forgot the strong feeling for local independence among
the Luxemburgers, who, as their national song runs, ‘want to remain
what they are’; she forgot the strength of dynastic tradition and
clerical influence. For any union with Belgium spelled the end of the
local dynasty and of national identity, and might, it was feared, mean
the swallowing up of a conservative Catholic people by a larger and
more Socialistic neighbor.
France also wanted Luxemburg. She wanted it for purposes of defence, so
as to prevent a repetition of 1914; she wanted its iron mines and blast
furnaces. And, unlike the Belgians, she knew how to wait. The treaty
of peace merely insisted upon the permanent detachment of Luxemburg
from the Zollverein, and the abandonment of all German control over
its railways.[13] It did not touch the dynasty; it compelled no new
attachments. Meanwhile France, in the full glamor of victory, with a
brilliant staff quartered in the duchy itself, dazzled the imagination
of the Luxemburgers. They were brought to think that, while any
arrangement with Belgium threatened their independence, this could
be amply safeguarded in a merely economic union with France. In the
winter French troops even suppressed a little revolution against the
dynasty. And when the plebiscite came, September 28, 1919, a decided
majority pronounced for the reigning duchess and for a customs union
with France. Women voted for the first time in this election, and while
no separate returns were made of their votes, it is not likely that
they diminished the proportion of votes for the duchess.
Of all the German ruling families which were in power in 1918, the
sole survivor today is that of the grand duchess of Luxemburg. And
the only surviving Austrian prince is her consort, Prince Felix of
Bourbon-Parma, naturalized as a Luxemburger November 5, 1919, by a
close vote in the Chamber and married the following day. And if some
time these two should disappear in another revolution, the republic
which would follow seems likely to seek support from France rather than
from Belgium.
* * * * *
Belgium’s chief territorial difficulties lie on the side of Holland,
which controls the lower courses of her two great rivers, the Scheldt
and the Meuse, and hems in Belgium on her northeast corner in Limburg
and on her northwest corner in Flanders. The embarrassment is partly
strategic, limiting Belgium’s freedom in time of war, partly economic,
restricting the foreign commerce which is the lifeblood of the
Belgian people. From any point of view, the Dutch-Belgian frontier is
unnatural. It requires explanation as soon as you see it on the map.
No one would draw such a frontier if he were starting afresh. But it is
an historic frontier, and the ancient frontiers of a neutral power are
hard things for a peace congress to disturb.
The long tongue of land which constitutes the southern prolongation
of Dutch Limburg has diverse historical origins. Its chief town,
Maestricht, with parts of the adjacent country, has been Dutch
since the seventeenth century. Other parts belonged to the southern
Netherlands, and were acquired by the king of Holland as ‘compensation’
in 1839. Like Luxemburg, Limburg joined in the Belgian revolution of
1830 and had representatives in the Belgian parliament until 1839. But
in the final separation the peninsula was given to Holland, greatly to
Belgium’s dissatisfaction. An outlying region, it complained of neglect
by the Dutch government, and its economic relations were rather with
the adjacent lands of Belgium and Germany on either side. Recently,
with the development of its important coal mines, the Dutch have taken
much more interest in Limburg, and active efforts have been made to
counteract pro-Belgian tendencies.
The grievances of the Belgians respecting Limburg are twofold. From a
military point of view, it cannot be defended by Holland, whose troops
were withdrawn therefrom early in the late war. The Dutch claimed that
its neutrality was a protection for Belgium. The Belgians, with no
illusions as to German respect for neutral territory, replied that
they had no permanent assurance of this, and that Limburg would have
been crossed in 1914 if a breach had not finally been forced at Liège.
They made much of the fact that after the armistice German troops,
to the number of some 80,000, had been allowed to go home with their
booty by this route, thus escaping capture or internment in Holland.
The explanations of the Dutch were lame, but the offence could hardly
be said to merit severe punishment. The economic grievances of the
Belgians were more serious. Astride the Meuse at Maestricht, the Dutch
have delayed improvement and hindered canal navigation. In eight
miles of canal there are four sets of customs formalities, consuming
several days. Moreover, the best route for a Rhine-Scheldt canal, to
the construction of which Germany consented in the treaty,[14] lies
via Limburg, the levels across the region of the upper Meuse being
too difficult. If Belgium could not have Limburg, she at least wanted
military guarantees and economic facilities.
Important as is the Meuse to Belgium, her great highway is the Scheldt.
To all intents and purposes an arm of the sea, the Scheldt is navigable
for ocean-going vessels as far as Antwerp, 55 miles from its mouth.
Without it, Belgium becomes practically an inland country, for its
42 miles of North Sea coast have no harbors of value. Yet the lower
Scheldt is not Belgian nor even neutral; it belongs to Holland, through
whose territories it passes for 45 miles of its course. And it has
belonged to Holland since the sixteenth century, when the weakness of
Spain and the strength of the Dutch fixed the northern boundary of the
Spanish Netherlands. When the treaty of Westphalia (1648) confirmed the
northern provinces in the possession of the left bank of the Scheldt,
it also gave them the right to close completely the mouths of the river
and its tributaries. The purpose of this was to favor Amsterdam and
Rotterdam, and in consequence grass grew in the streets of Antwerp.
The revival of Belgium’s great port became possible only with the
French Revolution, which reopened the river, while the treaty of Vienna
declared navigation free on the Scheldt as well as the Meuse. The
existing state of affairs on the Scheldt was established by the treaty
of 1839, which created “a special regime which is neither that of the
sea nor that of ordinary rivers.”
The regime created by the treaty of 1839 has never been satisfactory to
the Belgians. One of its provisions reads:[15]
So far as regards specially the navigation of the Scheldt and of
its mouths, it is agreed that the pilotage and the buoying of the
channel, as well as the conservation of the channels of the Scheldt
below Antwerp, shall be subject to a joint superintendence, and that
this joint superintendence shall be exercised by commissioners to be
appointed for this purpose by the two parties. Moderate pilotage dues
shall be fixed by mutual agreement.
The Dutch have interpreted this strictly as giving the joint commission
control only over the pilotage (two concurrent services) and over
keeping the channels open and properly marked and buoyed. The Belgians,
on the other hand, have contended that the commission should have
cognizance of matters upon which the extent and security of the
channels depend, such as diking, drainage, encroachments on the river
and its accessory waters, etc., their ground being that the Scheldt
constitutes a single hydrographic problem, no portion of which can
be properly treated without reference to the whole. They allege the
failure to make sufficient modern improvements on the western Scheldt
because of the indifference of the Dutch authorities, and they also
complain of the serious difficulties of drainage in Belgian Flanders
caused by raising the level of the Dutch lands between it and the
Scheldt. Being interested in the use of the river to a far greater
degree than the Dutch, the Belgians find it intolerable to be dependent
on Dutch consent to every act of maintenance or improvement. Belgium
pays the entire cost of improvements, but the consent of Holland is
necessary. Thus the Terneuzen canal, which connects Ghent with the
Scheldt, was built by Dutch engineers but at Belgium’s expense, and the
Dutch portion does not correspond to the portion south of the frontier.
Holland’s position throughout is essentially negative. The Scheldt
furthers no major interest of hers; she has no important towns along
its banks, no foreign trade which it carries; its improvement benefits
only a commercial rival.