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Updated: July 10, 2025
All the fine plans we officers had sketched out together were folly. We were wasting time when, bending over our maps, we foresaw a skilful advance on the heels of Belgium's invaders, followed by a huge victory, dearly bought, perhaps, but one that would upset the German Colossus at a single blow. The whole thing was an illusion. And I thought what a fool I had been. I thought of my regiment.
Therefore, a bill was introduced in Belgium's Capital providing for the raising of an army of 600,000 men where before were 46,000 and a war footing of 147,000. The leader of the Catholic party opposed the programme, declaring that Belgian neutrality was guaranteed by Germany, France, and England. A compromise was effected by which an army of less than half this number was authorized.
He remains impenitent concerning his first instinct as to England's duty at the violation of Belgium's neutrality. We were justified in fighting; we could do no other; it was a stern duty laid upon us by the Providence which overrules the foolishness of man.
But there were flashes of almost divine light in the black darkness of Belgium's tragedy, and perhaps the brightest of them surrounded the person of her King. What King Albert did in those dark days of August 1914, to keep the soul of his nation alive in the midst of the immense sorrow of her utter overthrow his nation alone can fully know.
The organisation for doing good to Belgium against Belgium's will was an incomparable piece of chicane and pure rascality. Strange Belgians were long ago convinced that the visitation was inevitably coming, and had fallen into the habit of discussing it placidly over their beer at nights. To return to the side-street. So far as one could see, it had not received a dent, not a scratch.
We agree, too, with him that while she is not likely to respond to an appeal to intervene on the side of the Entente or the Alliance, the case of Belgium, the innocent victim of the war, is bound to find her in a very different mood. The States are already Belgium's almoner; it is only a step further for them to come in as her savior. But on a vital point we disagree with Mr. Shaw.
"But it is otherwise with regard to the atrocities on our wounded; these are a stain on Belgium's national honour which will not easily be wiped out. A German would never perpetrate such monstrous crimes, and that we can say without any overweening opinion of ourselves." Herr Knutz offers no proof of the alleged atrocities; he has heard of them, believes and repeats the story.
Popular imagination revels in their cruelty, and the Golden Legend displays to us all the grim splendours of a chamber of horrors. But the worst of all tortures starvation is not often inflicted. The idea is, I suppose, that the conversion must be sudden and striking. But Belgium's oppressors do not any longer want to convert her. They have tried and they have failed.
The status of neutrality not only affected foreign politics, it reacted very strongly on Belgium's internal life. If it crippled her activity with regard to home defence, it developed to an abnormal degree party warfare.
At the beginning of the twelfth century, trade not only moved from south to north, on Belgium's many navigable streams; it ran also from east to west along a new road connecting Bruges with Cologne, through Maestricht, St. Trond, Léau, Louvain, Brussels, Alost and Ghent, all these places occupying some favourable geographical position.
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