[1] COPYRIGHT BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
A BELGIAN LAWYER'S APPEAL[ToC]
One of the great lawyers of Belgium in behalf of the members of the bar of Brussels, Liége, Ghent, Charleroi, Mons, Louvain, and Antwerp, appeared twice before the German Court of Justice at Brussels and appealed for more just treatment of the Belgian people. In his first appeal, he protested against the illegal manner in which the Belgians were accused of crime, tried, and convicted at the pleasure of German officials. He concluded with the following eloquent words:
I can understand martial law for armies in the field. It is the immediate reply to an aggression against the troops, the quick justice of the commander of the army responsible for his soldiers. But our armies are far away; we are no longer in the zone of military operations. Nothing here threatens your troops, the inhabitants are calm.
The people have taken up work again. You have bidden them do it. Each one attends to his business—magistrates, judges, officials of the provinces and cities, the clergy, all are at their posts, united in one outburst of national interest and brotherhood.
However, this does not mean that they have forgotten. The Belgian people lived happily in their corner of the earth, confident in their dream of independence. They saw this dream dispelled; they saw their country ruined and devastated; its ancient hospitable soil has been sown with thousands of tombs where our own sleep; the war has made tears flow which no hand can dry. No, the murdered soul of Belgium will never forget.
His second appeal will be spoken by school children in Belgium, and perhaps in America, when the names of the German judges to whom he spoke are forgotten even in Germany.