All in all, Professor Schoenborn's attempt at partisanship is a miserable failure, and as an academic thesis it is doubtful whether the faculty of law in any German university would grant a student a degree for such a crude effort.
Various facts indicate Germany's intention to annex Belgium, if not the entire country, then those districts in which Flemish is spoken. Germany has suddenly remembered that the Flemings are a Low German people and that they have been "oppressed" by the Walloons. The hypocrisy of the plea becomes evident when we recall German (including Austrian) oppression of the Poles, Slavs and Hungarians.
One writer[[149]] has even endeavoured to prove that the House of Hesse has a legitimate historical claim to the province of Brabant. But as the following extracts will show, there is method in this madness. No pains are being spared to stir up racial feeling between the two peoples (Flemings and Walloons) who form King Albert's subjects. All the internal differences are being dished up to convince the inhabitants of Flanders that they will be much better off under the German heel.[[150]]
[!-- Note Anchor 149 --][Footnote 149: Dr. Karl Knetsch: "Des Hauses Hessen Ansprüche auf Brabant" ("The House of Hesse's Claims to Brabant"). Marburg, 1915.]
[!-- Note Anchor 150 --][Footnote 150: The Münchner Neueste Nachrichten for September 19th, 1915, contains a long account of a petition which was presented to Herr von Hissing, General Governor of Belgium, by a branch of the General Union of the Netherlands. The branch society is in Lierre (a town occupied by the Germans), and the petition is a statement of Flemish national and language aspirations. Unfortunately the document in question "makes a bitter attack on Franco-Belgian endeavours to rob the Flemings of their rights." It is superfluous to quote more; this sentence alone shows the origin of the petition to be German.]
Forgetting their tyrannous efforts to stamp out the Polish language and Polish national feelings, the Germans are now sorrowing over the alleged attempts of the Walloons to suffocate the Flemish dialect. German war books breathe hate and contempt for the Walloons, but bestow clumsy bear-like caresses (no doubt unwelcome to their recipients) on the Flemings.
In a work[[151]] already cited the following passages occur, in addition to three whole chapters intended to supply historical proof that Flanders is by the very nature of things a part of the German Empire.
[!-- Note Anchor 151 --][Footnote 151: Wilhelm Kotzde: "Von Lüttich bis Flandern" ("From Liége into Flanders"). Weimar, 1914.]
"The German people committed a grave crime, when they fought among themselves and left their race-brothers on the frontier, defenceless and at the mercy of a foreign Power. Therefore we have no right to scold these brothers (the Flemings), but should rather fetch them back into the German fold" (p. 40).
Kotzde reports a conversation which he had with an educated Fleming last autumn. "'We do not like the French and English,' said the Fleming. 'But what about Brussels?' I remarked. 'They are a people for themselves. The Flemish capital is Antwerp' he answered.