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Antwerp Citadel being the pride of the kingdom, the Belgians, restive under the control of the powers, demanded that both England and France help them at once to recover it, alleging that in case this help was refused, they, with their hundred thousand men, were ready to capture it themselves.
The immense inconvenience attendant to this mode of warfare decided the Germans to drain this area and they succeeded in doing this by the end of January, 1915. On the other hand the Belgians captured two German trenches in the north on January 17, 1915, and the British sent a force to attack Lille on January 18.
Is it not to the same system of anarchy, of equalization, and want of subordination, which has been recommended in some clubs and defended even in the Convention, that we owe the pillages, the murders, the enormities of all kinds, which it was difficult for the officers to put a stop to, from the general spirit of insubordination, excesses which have rendered the French name odious to the Belgians?
After so many years of war and foreign subjection, the Belgians believed that Albert and Isabella would bring them a much needed peace and an independence similar to that which they enjoyed under Charles V and Philip the Handsome.
The restaurants seemed crowded with Belgians as well as Germans, and the Belgians did not seem to have lost their appetites. The Palace Hotel had become a German officers' club. On all the public buildings the German Imperial flag hung alongside the Belgian. Only a few of the trams were running.
My German friend had evidently been following us up, meaning to get everything we had and me too. But the smell of the onions was too much for him! If he hadn't been greedy, he might have carried out his plan, but he wanted our potatoes and our supper too; and so he got neither!" he chuckled. "And neither did the Kaiser get a toast from me! Instead, he got a salute from the Belgians."
Mapps finished his remarks for the present, and the ships' company returned to the carriages, and were driven to the Place des Martyrs, where there is a large monument erected to the memory of three hundred Belgians, who fell in the Revolution of 1830, which made Belgium an independent kingdom.
It had been a mixed race of many tongues, selling itself little by little, all unconsciously, to the German bondage. I saw the marks of this spiritual invasion on the inner life of the Belgians marks of a destruction more thorough than the shelling of a city. The ruins of Termonde are only the outward and visible sign of what Germany has attempted on Belgium for more than a generation.
But the King determined to defend his country to the last drop of Belgian blood, not sparing his own, and the Belgians sent the following reply back to the German war lords: "The German ultimatum has caused the Belgian Government deep and painful astonishment, and Belgium refuses to believe that her independence could only be preserved at the cost of violating her neutrality."
After the canal line was won, and the Belgians were in position to hold it, they could make little headway eastward. Their advance was checked by a series of batteries which were concealed in the Forest of Houthulst.
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