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 From a military point of view, it cannot be defended by Holland, whose troops were withdrawn therefrom early in the late war.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.
In time of war Holland interprets her sovereignty as compelling her to close the river to belligerents. In August 1914 English reënforcements were thus forbidden to relieve Antwerp, although their purpose was to maintain Belgian neutrality, while Belgian troops were denied exit by the river and forced, to the number of several thousand, to suffer internment in Holland. Such control of the river nullifies the centre of Belgium’s defensive system at Antwerp; it might also permit the turning of her Flemish defences in case of a war with Holland. The Dutch maintain that the neutrality of the Scheldt during the Great War was of real assistance to the Allies, who would otherwise have suffered from German submarine bases along its banks; but the Belgians point out that the closing of the river in war destroys at one blow the whole foreign commerce of Antwerp, a result that might ensue even in a war in which Holland was a party and Belgium neutral.
The simplest solution of the problem of the Scheldt would be the elimination of Holland from its southern shore, which she has held for more than three hundred years. This land, called Maritime or Zealand Flanders (Flandre zélandaise, Ryksvlaanderen), has an area of 275 square miles and a population of 78,677, chiefly Catholic. Its economic relations are mainly with Belgium, but it has manifested no desire to change its political affiliations, and has recently been assiduously cultivated by Holland. A less drastic measure would be the admission of Belgium to co-sovereignty on the lower Scheldt, leaving Holland in possession of its banks. Still another possibility would be the complete internationalization of the river, under the League of Nations. These solutions, especially the first two, have been energetically opposed in Holland as infringements on her sovereignty. The question of her boundaries was not, she declared, a matter for the Peace Conference.