Belgium: From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day

by Emile Cammaerts

CHAPTER XXIX

CONCLUSION

The part played by Belgium during the war is well known. Those who knew the country and its history were not astonished at the attitude observed by King Albert and his people on August 3, 1914. Quite apart from any foreign sympathies, no other answer could be given to an ultimatum which directly challenged Belgium's rights. A modern nation might have been intimidated, but an old nation like Belgium, which had struggled towards independence through long and weary periods of warfare and foreign domination, was bound to resist. In challenging King Albert and his ministers, the German Government challenged at the same time all the leaders of the Belgian people, from De Coninck to Vonck and De Mérode, and the reply of the Belgian Government was stiffened by an age-long tradition of stubborn resistance and by the ingrained instinct of the people that this had to be done because there was nothing else to do.

GERMAN INVASION

History also accounts for the desperate fight waged by the small and ill-equipped army against the first military Power in Europe. Liége, Haelen, the three sorties from Antwerp, the ten terrible days on the Yser, are not due merely to the personal valour of the leaders and of their troops, but to the fact that they were Belgian leaders and Belgian troops, that they belonged to a nation conscious of her destiny and who had never despaired in the past, in spite of the ordeals to which she was subjected and of the scorn of those who questioned her very existence. The same thing might be said of all Allied nations. Even so fought the British, even so fought the French; the only difference lies in the fact that their heroism was expected as a matter of course, while that of the Belgians came to many as a surprise. For British traditions and French traditions were well known, while the past of Belgium was blurred amidst the confusion of Feudalism and foreign rule.

On the Yser, in October 1914, the Belgian forces had been reduced from 95,000 to 38,000 bayonets. These last defences, preserving about twenty square miles of independent territory, were maintained during four years while the army was refilling its ranks and reorganizing its supplies. It took its share in all the concerted actions of the Allies in Flanders, and when, at last, the final offensive was launched, on September 28, 1918, King Albert was placed at the head of the Anglo-Franco-Belgian forces.

Meanwhile the civil population, under German occupation, was undergoing one of the severest trials that the nation had ever experienced, not excepting revolutionary oppression and the Spanish Fury. The Germans used every means in their power to disintegrate the people's unity, break its resistance and enlist its services. Terrorism was used, from the first, at Aerschot, Louvain, Tamines, Andenne and Dinant, whilst the invasion progressed towards the heart of the country. Then, under the governorship of Von Bissing, the method was altered, and attempts were made to induce the chiefs of industry and their workmen to resume work for the greater benefit of the enemy. This policy culminated in the sinister deportations, pursued during the winter of 1916-17, which enslaved about 150,000 men and compelled them to work either behind the German front or in German kommandos. Enormous fines and contributions were levied on towns and provinces, the country was emptied of all raw material, private property and the produce of the soil were systematically requisitioned, and the population would have been decimated by famine but for the help of the Commission for Relief in Belgium. When it became evident, in 1917, that the passive resistance of the workers could not be broken, all the industries which had not been commandeered were entirely or partially destroyed and the machinery transported to Germany.

VON BISSING'S INTRIGUES

The most insidious attack of Governor von Bissing's policy on the Belgian nation was his attempt to use the Flemish Movement as a means to divide the Belgians against themselves. The governor, who explained his intentions in a remarkable document known as his "Political Testament," undertook this campaign under the assumption that Belgium was an artificial creation of the Vienna Congress and that such a thing as Belgian nationality did not really exist. German university professors had been at great pains to explain to the German and neutral public that nationality could only be created by unity of race or language, and that Belgium, possessing neither of these attributes, could consequently claim no right to independence. Following this trend of thought, the governor and his advisers considered the Flemish Movement as the outcome of internal dissensions between Walloons and Flemings, and hoped that, by encouraging the Flemings, they would succeed in dividing the country and in securing the protectorate of Flanders.

First the creation of a Flemish University in Ghent, replacing the French University, absorbed the attention of the German administration. Having secured the support of a few extreme "flamingants" known as "activists" and completed the professorial board with foreigners, they hastily inaugurated the new institution (1916). To their great surprise, all Flemish organizations protested indignantly against this action, contending that the occupying Power had no right to interfere in internal policy. The next step was a series of decrees establishing Administrative Separation, with two capitals at Namur and Brussels and a complete division of Government offices between the Flemish and Walloon districts of the country. This measure failed like the first, owing to the patriotic resistance of the Belgian officials and the inability of the Germans to replace them, and long before they were obliged to evacuate the country the Germans had given up the hope of mastering the absurd and unscientific decision of Walloons and Flemings alike to remain one people, as history had made them.