ASOVEREIGN, coming at an early age to the most conspicuous throne in Europe, already too sure of his own talents, fretting with impatience to rule without restraint or guardianship, pacific both by instinct and by reason, but of a helmeted and mail-clad pacifism, which loved to vent itself in needless threats. The same prince, twenty-five years later, puffed up with pride over the marvellous expansion of his country (in which he had certainly borne his share by keeping the peace), but gradually won over to the schemes of conquest and of domination whispered into his ear; ill-informed, for want of accurate reports and of personal discernment, as to the state of public feeling among his neighbours, and as to their capacity for resistance; ready, without any qualms, to seize the first opportunity of starting a war in which victory seemed to him certain and the risks hardly worth counting; the responsible author, since he wields a despotic sway, of all the horrors and disasters around us, bred by the relentless militarism and the boundless ambition of a dynasty that deems itself called upon to govern the world.

A royal family, void of prestige or distinction, obscured by the shadow that the dazzling personality of the Emperor cast behind it, although one figure strove hard to emerge from the darkness—the restless, carping, bellicose Crown Prince. Federal rulers enjoying a mere puppet sovereignty, and acquiescing in their subaltern rÔle, from fear of vanishing altogether from the German stage, a stage now too narrow to let them stand by the side of their CÆsar. Statesmen as powerless to make their counsels prevail as to defend the Imperial policy, over which, perhaps, their conscience smote them at times. A Reichstag split up into too many groups and parties, and divided on all questions save that of the timeliness of this war, the Conservatives hoping thereby to strengthen their influence and the Socialists expecting to gain, as the price of their zealous support, those political liberties that they were unable to win by main force.

A disciplined, credulous, and hard-working nation, concerned above all with earning its daily bread, pacific for the most part, or rather indifferent to foreign affairs, until the day when, on the strength of official assurances, it believed itself to be attacked, and in peril of losing its work, its national honour, its very existence. A lying vision, yet hard to banish from its gaze; an erroneous belief, which will drive it, until the bitter end, to face the most dire suffering and to endure the most cruel sacrifices. The future will teach us whether it will not demand later on a heavy reckoning from those who have played it false.

A minority drawn from the intellectual and governing castes, dreaming of victory and aggrandisement, with a passionate desire to see the colossal fabric of German supremacy towering to the heavens, steeped in a limitless hatred or disdain for those who have not the honour to be Germans. From the very opening of hostilities, the morbid conceit of the scholars and men of science was unveiled in clear outlines through those amazing manifestoes on the rights that the superior science, organization, strength, and culture of Germany empower her to claim. In my opinion, however, it would be a mistake to look upon this select band as typical of the nation, just as it would be wrong to make all Germany answerable for the misdeeds of her brutal soldiery, and for the frightful war waged by the military and naval chiefs.

Disheartening rebuffs to German and Austro-Hungarian diplomacy both in Morocco and the Near East, where, despite all the efforts of Berlin and Vienna, there arose a state of things inimical to the spread, nay even to the prestige, of Germanism. As a result of these checks, a vast increase of military preparations, while at the same time the war parties in Germany (and in Austria-Hungary too) raged and clamoured more than ever—warning symptoms, to which public opinion abroad, misled by the peaceful solution of the previous crisis, paid but a half-hearted attention.

All these causes, individual or collective, whirling us abruptly—on the morrow of a murder that a little police precaution would have averted—to the brink of an abyss in which the freedom of Europe has come near to being engulfed for ever....

Such is the complicated picture that I have tried to sketch, with as a background the crimes committed against Belgium and Serbia. I hope that I may be pardoned for closing this book with a few words on the subject of my gallant country.

Civilization is not a unique, exotic plant, the product of Kultur, of a chosen people, but a cluster of varied flowers, grown on varied soils, and the most modest of them are not the least hardy nor the least beautiful. From the standpoint of human progress, the existence of small States, contributing to that progress, has justified itself as essential to the needs of mankind. Some have been fruitful fields for experiment in the introducing or the improving of various social or political systems. Others have outstripped nations far larger than themselves in the universal realm of literature and the fine arts; others on the broad path of industrial competition. In these and other domains, how many deathless glories can one of them show on the long and illustrious scroll of its history!

The political necessity for the existence of small States, as factors of peace, is no less imperative. It has sometimes been their lot, by virtue of their situation at the mouths of rivers, on the shores of seas, or at the intersection of mountain-ranges, to restrain the clashing and the jarring of the quarrelsome great Powers. They have thus served as watertight compartments or solid buffers, if these technical terms are worthy to express the services rendered by them in maintaining the harmony of Europe.

The war party and the Prussian military writers, with their imperialist doctrines, will not hear to-day of the European balance. To them it is an outworn shibboleth, a mere historical relic. Yet one of the great lessons to be learnt from a study of the past is that this balance remains permanent and indestructible in a continent peopled by rival races. In the end, it has always come to be restored on the ruins of mighty empires, after the shocks and oscillations that it has suffered from the ambitions of conquerors. At the beginning of the last two centuries, the map of Europe, a shifting mosaic, was fixed anew by a sort of historical process, and the small States were not the least useful materials that went to the working of this transformation.

As a matter of fact, Belgium is one of the oldest among these States, for she may fairly trace her career back to the days of the Duke of Burgundy, to the reign of Philip the Good, who succeeded in reuniting the Belgian provinces of the Netherlands. For four centuries—apart from an interval of twenty years, during which these provinces were attached to France and received from her their laws and their administrative divisions—their Walloon and Flemish inhabitants lived side by side under the same foreign rulers. They did not blend, it is true; each element was careful to retain its distinctive language and character. But they professed the same creed, kept up brotherly relations, and enjoyed similar liberties, more happy and more free in their thriving cities and mediÆval communes than many a more ambitious nation. From the time that Belgium acquired a dynasty of her own and took her seat among the nations, wrapped in her neutrality as in a robe of spotless white, she made remarkable headway in almost every branch of human activity. The little people of a few million souls occupied before the war the fifth place in the list of commercial and industrial countries, standing above Austria-Hungary with its fifty million inhabitants! King Leopold did not overrate either the energy or the spirit of enterprise inherent in his subjects, when he opened up and finally handed over to them the vast basin of his great African river. What a splendid prospect of work and endeavour was offered to them in Africa as in Europe! What a noble future for an industrious life, deserving the respect of the whole civilized world!

Yet there was one thing lacking to Belgium: she had not been purified by sorrow or hallowed by suffering. This crown of thorns was at last thrust upon her head by the cruelty of the Germans. Then the little nation was seen to stiffen under its martyrdom, without abandoning the struggle to live and to resist. The shining example of heroism came to it from above, from its young royal pair, to whom it was devoted, and in whom it centred its fondest hopes. Ten months have passed, and King Albert still remains planted, firmly as an oak, in the last shred of territory, facing the enemy, whose strength is powerless to bend or to break him. Around him is his young army, sadly thinned by unequal struggles, but galvanized into new life, having repaired its losses by an accession of fresh blood, certain of victory, for it knows that the very heart of its country is throbbing beneath the folds of its flag. Not far off is the Government, which would not yield up the honour of Belgium at the German bidding, and which labours busily in its exile, in order to relieve our refugees, to maintain the public services, and to act as intermediary for the generous and sympathetic aid tendered from foreign sources.

If Europe turns aside from the sight of this indomitable resistance, and looks at our country, what does she see there? The head of the Belgian clergy, the very incarnation of civic patriotism and priestly virtues, stimulating his flock to courage and endurance, caring nought for coercion or threats, and awaiting with full trust in the Divine Judge the day when in his church (not spared, alas! by the invader) he shall celebrate the Te Deum of our deliverance. Everywhere she sees devotion to the fatherland and to Christian solidarity: she sees the burgomaster of Brussels, whose brave voice could only be silenced by imprisonment, although even now his memory and his example still hover, as an ever-present encouragement, above his fellow-citizens and his city; she sees men who yesterday were rich, heads of banks that to-day are closed and of workshops that to-day are empty, joining with the intellectual flower of Brussels citizens to provide for the poor, to ensure that the people shall not die of hunger and privation; she sees women of all sorts and conditions turned into Sisters of Charity; she sees fathers and mothers, stricken to the heart by the death of their sons or anxious as to their fate, living often in homes that the enemy has rifled, yet with calm, tearless eyes and faces ennobled by sacrifice; and last of all she sees, behind the classes that once were privileged, the admirable crowd, the army of humble toilers, stoically enduring their forced loss of work or their inability to help their country, watching in grim silence the countless dead and wounded brought in from the enemy regiments, who do not cease to dye with their blood that Belgian soil where they thought they had only to appear in order to conquer!

No, such a people cannot die. The Belgian soul, whose existence some dared to deny, has gained a new temper from the flame of battle, and it still lives to-day, more vigorous than ever, to realize our national motto—“Union makes Strength.” But Belgium is not yet at the end of her long ordeal, at the limit of her travail, or on the eve of drying her tears. The iron monster of German militarism cannot be battered down in a day. I have seen him at too close quarters preparing and arming for the fray to have any delusions on that score. The league of his adversaries has swollen in number and grown in power; but at present this only whets his rage, and thus for the time being his might, like that of a man who suddenly goes mad, is redoubled. Germany is not yet near to waking up, with a start, from her tragic dream of triumph and domination. The day of liberation is slow to dawn for us, and we still have a long agony to go through. But let no Belgian, whether he has been forced to take the road of exile, or is suffering, with no word of complaint, the well-nigh intolerable contact with the oppressor—let no Belgian become for a single instant a prey to discouragement or despair! The hour will strike without fail from the belfries of our town-halls and the steeples of our churches—the hour when our country, reconquered and ten times more dear, will press to her lacerated bosom all her sons, once more united in an equal love for their common mother; the hour when Belgium will recover her place among the nations, a loftier place than ever, owing to her valour in the combat and her steadfastness in adversity.