IV.
The geographical position of Belgium, devoid as she is of natural frontiers, in itself compelled her to adopt measures of defence: to build fortresses and to maintain an efficient army. The chequered history of the past served to the Belgian people as a warning for the future. Her plains had been the favourite cockpit for the struggles between Bourbon and Hapsburg, the theatre of the first victories of the French Republic, and the grave of the Napoleonic Empire. By a miracle, our country was saved from all peril in 1870, through the sacrifice of a French army, which chose to surrender at Sedan rather than seek refuge in neutral territory. The prospect of another war, which loomed large before us even during the most quiet hours of the last few decades, made it an imperative duty for our rulers to take far-reaching military precautions.
A no less cogent reason was the upholding of our neutrality. A neutral State, if attacked, is bound to defend itself. It owes this to its guarantors, in order to preserve that balance of interests which in their eyes is the motive that justifies its existence. In other words, a neutrality that cannot defend itself is nothing but a diplomatic fiction.
Our various ministries, Catholic or Liberal, have had this obligation impressed upon them, each in its turn. The progress of armaments (if the word “progress” can be applied to the monstrous development of these engines of destruction) has loaded the Belgians, in the same way as their neighbours, with an ever-growing mass of military burdens. A defensive system that seemed adequate in 1870 was no longer adequate ten years later, owing to the increase in the number of combatants and the power and range of artillery, both in France and Germany. To Antwerp, a fortress and an entrenched camp—our only real stronghold, called by us “the keep of our castle”—must be added the forts of Liège and Namur, intended to block up the valley of the Meuse. Experts agreed in pointing to this as the natural route for an army seeking to pierce into France from Germany, or vice versa, without coming into collision with the defensive works erected on both sides of the Vosges. The forts with steel cupolas at Liège and Namur, devised by our great military engineer Brialmont, were for a time considered the most finished product of the art of fortification. After exhaustive debates lasting for two years, the Belgian Parliament resolved in 1906 to devote a sum of £2,520,000 to reconstructing the defences of Antwerp, which were of an obsolete type. Fifteen new forts were built on both banks of the Scheldt, besides twelve redoubts, and the expenditure did not stop at the above estimate.
The Belgian army remained until 1909 on a peace footing of 100,000 men. It was recruited both by voluntary methods and by a system of conscription which allowed the providing of substitutes, an antiquated and undemocratic principle. This figure was obviously too low for a serviceable field army and garrison force, two indispensable factors in our defence. Among the bulk of the population, however, feeling was opposed to the introduction of compulsory service. This was not due to a distaste for the profession of arms—the Belgian has always been a first-rate soldier—but from an aversion to barrack life and a dread of the promiscuities that it entails. Moreover, among many of our people, the belief in the inviolability granted to us by the 1839 treaties was still as firmly rooted as though it had been an article of faith. Their attention, as enterprising traders and manufacturers, did not go beyond the restricted area of their business. The political entanglements that succeeded each other from year to year could not shake their robust optimism, which looked upon military sacrifices as useless.
Happily, the perils with which Belgium was beset did not escape the vigilant eye of our Sovereigns. Leopold II. was not only the brilliant creator of the Congo State, the prime mover in Belgium’s economic expansion, an expansion that, relatively speaking, is no less noteworthy than that of the German nation; he was also a great patriot. As such, he never let slip any single opportunity in public life of admonishing the Belgians to do all that was needed for the strengthening, first of their defensive resources, and then of their field army. Fortunately, his appeals did not go unheard, and a considerable advance was made on the day that the Schollaert Cabinet passed the measure enacting that one son in every family must undergo military training, the first step towards a general system of compulsory service. When the Prime Minister brought the act to be signed, the old King was on his deathbed. With a failing hand he wrote his name, then sank back into his last sleep, conscious of having fulfilled his duty to his country.
His successor applied himself with the same patriotic zeal to carrying out the same task. He had already vowed to bring it to completion. There is no topic on which the native eloquence of King Albert was heard to better advantage than that of making the army fit to meet the responsibilities that it would one day incur. The events of 1911 and 1912 showed, even to those who had tried the hardest to shut their eyes, how unerring was the insight of our Sovereign. Many statesmen whose brains had been clouded by the visions of a too lofty idealism now saw the error of their ways, and realized that the abolition of war was as yet an idle dream. The bill introducing universal service was passed in May 1913. M. de Broqueville, who had supported it with consummate skill before the Chamber, had the notable honour of inscribing his name underneath the King’s own on one of the most striking pages of Belgium’s internal history.
It was thus fifteen months before the German invasion that this much-needed law secured a majority of votes in the Belgian Parliament. It stands to reason that, if we had wanted to sign a secret pact with England and France some years earlier, their Governments would have insisted, before all things, on the strengthening of our inadequate army. The new bill was to furnish an annual contingent of from 33,000 to 35,000 men, and we could look forward to a total of 340,000 combatants, excluding a variable number of volunteers, as soon as the system was in full working order. The anticipated effectives, however, would not be obtained until 1925. In 1914, at the moment of taking the field, the Belgian army had some 226,000 men, together with 4,500 officers and 4,170 military police, wherewith to stem the tide of invasion.
The introduction of universal service in Belgium was not looked upon with favour in Germany. As a matter of fact, the Emperor ought to have been delighted. During his visit to Switzerland in the previous autumn, he had complained of the exposed state of his north-western frontier, as contrasted with the solid rampart provided in the south by the excellent troops of the Swiss Confederation. The German newspapers spoke of our military reforms without any malicious comments, but the same cannot be said of the German officer class. I was able to gather this from the remarks made to me by Baron von Zedlitz, colonel of a dragoon regiment of the Guards, and grandson, on his mother’s side, of a former Belgian minister at Berlin. No doubt the Belgian sympathies that he had inherited from his mother moved him to unbosom himself to me one day. “What is the good,” he said, “of enlarging the number of your troops? With the small number that you had before, you surely never dreamt of barring the way to us in a Franco-German war. The increase of your effectives might inspire you with the idea of resisting us. If a single shot were fired on us, Heaven knows what would become of Belgium!” This was the language of a friend, but not of a soldier. I answered the colonel that we should be rated still lower than at present, if we were craven enough not to defend ourselves, and that our guns would be ready to meet the invader, whoever he might be. I had occasion to repeat this phrase several times to other Germans. They listened with smiles, but they did not believe me.