It needs, indeed, an effort of the imagination at the moment of
writing to think of Belgium as in any sense a component part of
"Beautiful Europe." The unhappy "cockpit" of the Continent at the
actual hour is again in process of accomplishing its frightful
destiny - no treaty, or "scrap of paper," is potent to preserve
this last, and weakest, of all the nations of Western Europe from
drinking to the dregs the cup of ruin and desolation. Tragic
indeed in the profoundest sense - in the sense of Aristotle - more
tragic than the long ruin of the predestined house of Oedipus - is
this accumulated tragedy of a small and helpless people, whose
sole apparent crime is their stern determination to cling at any
cost to their plighted word of honour. I have been lately glancing
into a little book published about five years ago, in which a view
is taken of the Belgian character that no one could term
indulgent. "It is curious," says the writer in one place, "how few
Belgians, old or young, rich or poor, consider the feelings or
convenience of others. They are intensely selfish, and this is
doubtless caused by the way in which they are brought up." And,
again, in another chapter, he insinuates a doubt as to whether the
Belgians, if ever called on, would even prove good soldiers. "But
whether the people of a neutral State are ever likely to be brave
and self-sacrificing is another thing." Such a writer certainly
does not shrink - as Burke, we know, once shrank - from framing an
indictment against an entire people.
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