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It was tiresome for the English to be tied to a language that crippled all spontaneous talk; these linguistic gymnastics were fun to begin with, but soon they became very troublesome; and the Belgians suspected sensibilities in their hosts and a vast unwritten code of etiquette that did not exist; at first they were always waiting, as it were, to be invited or told or included; they seemed always deferentially backing out from intrusions.
He laughed and tagged me for a beach resort at Ault-Onival on the northern coast of France. I was there a week and had a bully time. The place had been a fashionable watering place before the war, and when I was there the transient population was largely wealthy Belgians. They entertained a good deal and did all they could for the pleasure of the four thousand boys who were at the camp.
And on a slight rise, but so concealed from him by the willows that only the great wings showed, stood the windmill. It was the noon respite then, and beyond the line of poplars all was quiet. The enemy liked time for foods and the Belgians crippled by the loss of that earlier train, were husbanding their ammunition.
I remember the almost ecstasy with which one April afternoon some of us found ourselves among the purple hyacinths on Kemmel hill. Poor Kemmel, once a pleasure resort whither happy Belgians went for the benefit of their health, now far from that and not particularly healthy! These battered villages are now merely sordid; only Ypres maintains a personality, an air of undefeat all its own.
But the Nassauers, Dutch, and Belgians were almost worthless; and not a few of them were justly suspected of a strong wish to fight, if they fought at all, under the French eagles rather than against them.
But there are some, I know, who think them significant." The King of the Belgians shrugged his shoulders. "They were of an unofficial character and entirely without importance. The German Staff probably knew all about them long before the declaration of war. They themselves had, without doubt, discussed and recorded similar probabilities in case of war with other countries.
To begin with, the Belgians have been allowed to show their loyalty with discretion; next, every patriotic manifestation is excluded from public life; and last, the Germans, through their spies, penetrate the homes of every citizen, and endeavour to extirpate by a reign of terror these same feelings which they so emphatically promised to respect.
The victims of this punishment will be at least a half million of French, Belgians, and Englishmen, together with a whole nation which desired peace as we did, but which has allowed herself to be misled by a Government mad enough to wish to reconcile the irreconcilable, namely, the maintenance of peace and the spirit of conquest. May this punishment at least begin an era of new peace!
He failed in both these objects; and the only result of his efforts was to raise the anger of the King of the Belgians, who, forgetting for a moment his royal reserve, addressed an indignant letter on the subject to his niece.
Six years, however, were to elapse before the Dutch government would consent to the conditions drawn up by the powers in 1831. Meanwhile the Belgians were free from their share of debt, held the greater part of Limburg and Luxemburg, and enjoyed the free navigation of the Maas and the Scheldt, over and above the terms granted them in 1831.
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