Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 10, 2025
But this official figure must not be considered as being a long way from the truth. At certain moments Belgium's demands have surpassed even the total of her national wealth, while the damages have not been more than some milliards.
That issue was not for every one to see, and there were many to whom the struggle was merely national rivalry in which the interests of England happened to coincide with those of France and in which we should have intervened just the same without any question of Belgium's neutrality. Whether it might have been so can never be determined.
Investigations conducted by any examining commission whatsoever, can never dispose of the irrefutable fact that German troops were forced by Belgium's native population to take defensive measures in the interests of self-preservation.
To the Americans who objected that Switzerland's mountains and lakes, being free from hateful war memories, offer more fitting surroundings for the capital of the League of Peace than Brussels, where vestiges of the odious struggle will long survive, they answered that they could only regret that Belgium's resistance to the lawless invaders should be taken to disqualify her for the honor.
It was deliberately destroyed. But, of course, you know that." "The matter of the violation of Belgium's neutrality still remains an open question," I said.
Belgium's magnificent resistance thus saved Paris, gave breathing space to the French, and enabled the Allies to swing their sword before smiting. Russia, too, did better than had been augured of her, but not nearly as well as if her resources had been organized by competent experts, alive to the dangers that threatened the empire.
A Belgian woman whose father was one of Belgium's leading lawyers her husband was at the front-was the busy head of this organization, because, as she said, the busier she was the more it "keeps my mind off " and she did not finish the sentence. How many times I heard that "keeps my mind off " a sentence that was the more telling for not being finished.
We admit having injured Belgium's neutrality, but we have only done it because of dire necessity, because we could not otherwise reach France and take up the fight against two sides forced upon us. Belgium's independence and freedom, which is suddenly of the utmost importance to your King and your Ministers, we have not touched.
Nearly every single letter from soldiers, published in German papers, records the fact that in the villages through which they passed they were given water, wine and food, while payment was in many cases refused. It is part of Germany's policy to blacken Belgium's character in order to justify her own ruthlessness naturally Wolff's Agency was one of the principal tools to that end.
Belgium has been crushed between the Alliance and the Entente: it was these two menaces to the peace of Europe that produced Armageddon; and as Belgium's heroic resistance served the Entente against the Alliance, the obligation to make good the remediable damage is even more binding on the Entente. But there is another and more pressing matter arising out of the conquest of Belgium.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking