These immense co-operatives were, perhaps, the most characteristic Belgian contribution to social readjustment. But in direct action by the State they had also been pioneers. The first experiment in Old Age Pensions did not come from Germany—formerly the worshipped idol of English Liberals and Tariff Reformers alike. It came from the city of Ghent. The first experiment in the deliberate building of “workmen’s dwellings” as such was not made in Mülhausen, it was made in Verviers. The whole body of Belgian law regulating economic life is expounded in two masterly volumes issued from Louvain by Father Vermeersh, the Jesuit, who so bravely exposed the early atrocities in the Congo. (Perhaps it is as well to interpolate here that if the crimes were great, the amendment has been complete. On the same terms it would be possible to forgive all the sins of history.) The intervention of formal law is not quite as comprehensive as it is in these countries. But it helps the worker at all his crises: birth, marriage, accident, disease, old age. In one respect at least it is far superior to our code: property in small parcels is much more readily accessible to the labourer. This is accomplished by exemption of workmen’s home sites and garden plots from various heads of taxation, and by the provision of cheap loans. It will be found in the end that this accessibility to land, to land in fee-simple, is the real solution of half our labour difficulties, and the real counter-programme to Socialism. And the nation that pioneered it will enjoy deserved honour. Like other Latin countries Belgium has what we, to our shame, have not: a Homestead and Household Protection Act, the only bulwark against usury.
As to the particular points in which Belgian experience may enlighten ours, there is one which ought to be mentioned. Cheap fee-simple land for industrial workers plus cheap railways, has done a great deal to break the isolation of country and town, and to solve housing difficulties. There is also a distinct human gain. Your industrial worker who grows his own vegetables on his own land is a very different man from the unit of your propertyless proletariat. The railway policy of Belgium is generally misunderstood. In the first instance, only the main lines are owned by the State; in the second, the complaint that the State Railways “do not pay” misses the whole essence of the matter. They are not run as dividend-producing concerns; they are run as one of the fundamental public utilities. Roads used to “pay”; now they are paid for out of the public purse. Who complains? The Belgian State Railways did certainly not lose money; further, their policy was not controlled by the necessity of making it directly. Railways so conducted yield a diffused national dividend of utility, the value of which is incalculable.
A further token of this firm handling of the tangles of everyday life is to be found in the work done in the School of Social Sciences at Louvain. I had not much opportunity of studying its courses, but I fancy that Father Corcoran, the distinguished Jesuit educationist, would know all about it. It is likely that he derived from it the idea of the Leo Guild. In Belgium, at all events, it was a thing of course that a priest should be not an economist—a poor title and quality—but a trained healer of economic disease. The activity manifested under the inspiration of the Church was extremely rich, and diversified. And not only in Flanders, but also in Wallonie. I have a list showing for the little Walloon town of Soignies, a town of 9000 inhabitants, no less than fifteen different Catholic economic societies. Nobody can ever have gone to Mass in Belgium without contributing at the door his “denier scolaire” for the education of poor children, or without seeing the Catholic Young Guards, engaged in some of their manifestations. Priests in Belgium would tell you that their success is due to the care with which they have avoided every hint of “clericalism.” At all events, a Catholic Government has been able in one of the freest countries in Europe to maintain, and at the last election, to strengthen, its position against all assaults. It used to be said that the industrialisation of the Campine—now agricultural, but rich in coal as yet unmined—would ultimately put Socialism in the saddle. The war has intervened. Who will venture to cast a horoscope now?
The language situation in Belgian was well known to Irish readers. Indeed the compliment was returned. The last paper I remember looking at before the German column under Van Boehm wheeled by Ghent was a copy of Ons Land. It contained excellent photographs of prominent Gaelic League personages, with an account of the movement in Ireland. In Flanders, the position is a sort of transposition of ours into another key. The Flamand is in a majority of nine to eight. He presents, although a Catholic, a marked temperamental resemblance to our typical Protestant Ulsterman. So far as one could judge he has pretty well had his own way in all points except one. His language will live side by side with French, but it can hardly hope, or even desire, to displace the lingua franca of civilisation. By the way, it was interesting to notice the Pro-German articles in some of the Flemish papers even after the invasion. The Germans, it was said, were first cousins of the Flemings, Teutons like them, solid, pious, religious people, not like the atheistical Walloons and French! I am afraid that the burning zeal of the Germans towards their kinsmen was too lamentably literal for that campaign to succeed. But it is well known that German agents have been promising the Flamands an autonomous Flanders, under the eagle of Berlin... after the annexation. Certain journalists lately addressed a manifesto to King Albert. They received a cold and dignified answer, to the effect that the first task of the Belgian nation was to recover Belgium, and all Belgium; afterwards the nation would settle its own future. The most interesting by-product of the conflict of tongues in Belgium is one that will certainly not be repeated here. In the Marolles—the Coombe, so to say, of Brussels—the necessities of daily intercourse have produced a mixture of French and Flemish which has developed strong individuality. One heard songs in it which cannot be described by any candid person as being funny without being vulgar. The linguistic future of Belgium will, no doubt, be worked out on a basis of equality. The clash was never charged with any political menace; after the war separation of any deep kind would be unimaginable. Belgium, said King Albert, has lost everything except her soul. Is it not even true that, for the first time, she has found her soul? As the poet, Antoine Classe, phrased it—
“Flamands, Walloons,
Ne sont que des prénoms,
Belge est notre nom de famille.”
In literature, written in French, Brussels is to Paris something as Dublin is to London. The same gibes at the “Brussels Brogue,” the same uneasy and all but indignant tremor when a great Belgian writer steps on the scene, the same grudged applause, finally the same adulation. It is a notable fact that most of the Belgians who have planted conquering banners in French literature are of Flemish stock—Maeterlinck, Verhaeren, Rodenbach, Cammaerts. Their imagination is coloured by two traditions. Of Maeterlinck one need say nothing. Verhaeren is certainly one of our supreme living poets, perhaps the supreme poet of our civilisation. Rodenbach, more local, is for ever part of the beauty and sadness of Bruges. Cammaerts is known by his exquisite songs. Camille Lemonnier, the painter and author, is perhaps the most vital and abundant representative of the Walloon stream of influence.
* * * * *
Such is an inadequate outline, a cinema survey of the work and the place of Belgian in time of peace. Such was the little, great nation that William the Treaty-Breaker has violated and ravaged. When one remembers it all—memory on golden memory, remembers the black ruins where a year ago men laboured and prayed at peace with other men, remembers the slow building-up and the sudden devastation, eighty years gone in a fortnight—does not the heart harden against these metaphysical barbarians of Prussia? Belgium to-day is the most illustrious evicted tenant of modern history. But, her enemies put down, she will return. Vive la Belgique!