belgiumized

Updated: May 4, 2025

If you wish to make a picture of the world as it will be when the war ends, you must conjure up such scenes as these human bones along the Russian highways where the great retreat took place and all that such a sight denotes; Poland literally starved; Serbia, blasted and burned and starved; Armenia butchered; the horrible tragedy of Gallipoli, where the best soldiers in the world were sacrificed to politicians' policies; Austria and Germany starved and whipped but liberalized perhaps no king in either country; Belgium belgiumized; northern France the same and worse; more productive Frenchmen killed in proportion to the population perhaps than any other country will have lost; Great Britain most of her best men gone or maimed; colossal debts; several Teutonic countries bankrupt; every atrocity conceivable committed somewhere a hell-swept great continent having endured more suffering in three years than in the preceding three hundred.

Burton Jesse Hendrick - The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II