"Do any of you wish to have the brand of shame those wastrels wear? Do any of you wish to have broken that national independent spirit that made our brothers bravely hold the Gate at Liege?
"To-day this German-made Humanist creed has gripped Germany, England, France and Austria. It stands for the levelling of the human being. None can rise above the common level. They call it the gospel of the Common Good, but there is nothing good in anything that clips the wings of those who would dare to excel; that baulks the aspirations of those who would use the brains their God has given them that they may rise.
"I tell you this 'Humanist' creed, rating all men as equal, and only recognising each man and each woman as one in a mob of similar animals, will lower the race till even your name will be replaced with a numeral. It is a creed akin to the German ideal of the man-animal that dragged a bloody trail across our country.
"I tell you, the creed must fail that cannot recognise any degrees of mental capacity; that cannot understand that man has a soul that cannot be confined within any man-drawn boundaries. This German-creed sweeps the earth with all the bombast of a war-mad Kaiser. It is going to fail, but not till men who think will rise and fight for recognition of their immortality. It will be the War of the Ages!
"And in the fight Belgium will stand firm once again as the Buffer State of Civilisation. It will hold the gate for the future of Humanity."
I came away from that meeting impressed with the air of prophecy in the discourse, for Belgium was standing firm for Individualism. A lonely State in a developing world of Socialism, and though Kings in other lands began to fear the safety of their crowns, Albert of Belgium was still the beloved sovereign of a prosperous people.
It was strange how Belgium quickly recovered from the war!
The energy generated by that conflict, the confidence engendered by success, and the adaptability and resourcefulness taught by the war, set off the loss of many of her manhood.
The war was a forerunner of a vigorous period of expansion of Belgian industry, for the employment of 800,000 German prisoners on national works set free the population to develop various enterprises.
Another incentive to excel was the practical sympathy the world had shown to Belgium in her days of distress. It put such stimulation into the nation that it felt it had to make good to merit the world's high regards.