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Updated: July 10, 2025
I am sorry I can not truthfully say that the early reports of German atrocities, or the news of Belgium's wanton invasion impelled me to fly to Canada to enlist and offer my life in the cause of humanity. No, it was simply that I wanted to find out what a "regular war" was like. It looked as though there was going to be a good scrap on and I didn't want to miss it.
When on July 31 the British foreign minister inquired by telegraph both at Paris and Berlin whether the two governments would engage to respect the neutrality of Belgium, France replied with an assurance that she was resolved to do so unless compelled to act otherwise by reason of the violation of Belgium's neutrality at the hands of another power.
It was a part of our plan to do it, and we did it. We know we signed a treaty that Belgium's neutrality and integrity should be maintained, but you see it did not suit our plans to keep our word, so we broke it. We will make it up to the Belgians afterwards, if they will do what we tell them; but if they will not, we will crush them. What is honour to a country like that?
Since then, the Germans have succeeded in outdoing all that. The basest and the worst that one can dream of is it not that campaign of slander and blackmail which they originated after their violation of Belgium's neutrality? Of course they did it as a murderer who slanders his victim in the hope to justify their crime." It is evil to murder non-combatants.
When the bells rang from the towers of Brussels Cathedral on July 21st last, when, in his red robes, Cardinal Mercier blessed the people assembled to celebrate the day of Belgium's Independence, it seemed that the soul of the martyred nation hovered in the Church.
Repudiate this principle and the demands of Ireland, Egypt, India to the benefits of self-determination became unanswerable. Belgium's claim to Dutch Limburg and other territorial oddments must likewise be allowed. Indeed, the plea actually put forward against these was that the Conference was incompetent to touch any territory actually possessed by either neutral or Allied states.
This war has freed our hands, which hitherto had been bound by the dictates of conscience. Of himself the German would never have kindled this world conflagration, but others have hurled the torch into our abode and our hands are free! "We do not yet know what Belgium's fate will be, but we can be perfectly sure that the Flemings will never again be left to the mercy of the Walloons and French.
Geneviève's story is surely the most romantic, the most pathetic of any saint who ever deigned to tread on earth! and her life and death might serve as an allegory of Belgium's martyrdom, poor Belgium, the little country whose patron she is.
"By allowing certain of the great Powers to see her cards, Belgium was not supporting the European balance, but seriously disturbing it. Even Belgium's Legation Secretary in Berlin had warned his Government concerning the political dangers arising out of intimacy with England.
It is their first and most insistent cry. People will read this who have never known the thirst of the battlefield or the parched throat that follows loss of blood; people who, by the turning of a tap, may have all the water they want. Perhaps among them there are some who will face this problem of water as America has faced Belgium's problem of food.
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