The Drama of Three Hundred and Sixty Five Days/The Part Played by Belgium
THE PART PLAYED BY BELGIUM
One of the earliest, and perhaps one of the most
inspiring, of the flashes as of lightning whereby
we saw the drama of the war was that which
revealed the part played by Belgium. Has
history any record of greater heroism and greater
suffering? Such courage for the right! Such
strength of soul against overwhelming odds and
the criminal suddenness of surprise! Although
the world has been told by Germany's spokesmen,
including Herr Ballin, Prince von Bülow, and
even Professor Harnack (all "honourable men,"
and the last of them a churchman), that down
to a few days before the outbreak of hostilities
"not one human being" among them had
"dreamt of war," it is the fact that within a few
hours of the dispatch of Germany's ultimatum
to Belgium, before the ink of it could yet be dry
and while the period of England's ultimatum in
defence of Belgian integrity was still unexpired,
the German legions were attacking Liege.
It was a cowardly and contemptible assault, but what a resistance it met with! A little peace-loving, industrial nation, infinitely small and almost utterly untrained, compared with the giant in arms assailing it, having no injury to avenge, no commerce to capture, no territory to annex, desiring only to be left alone in the exercise of its independence, stood up for six days against the invading horde, and hurled it back.
But war is a crude and clumsy instrument for the defence of the right, and after a flash of Belgium's unexampled bravery we were compelled to witness many flashes of her terrible sufferings. Liege fell before overwhelming numbers, then Namur, Termonde, Brussels, Louvain, and, last of all, Antwerp. What a spectacle of horror! The harvests of Belgium trodden into the earth, her beautiful cities and ancient villages given up to the flames, her historic monuments, which had been associated with the learning and piety of centuries, razed to the ground ; and, above everything in its pathos and pain, the multitudes of her people, old men, old women, young girls, and little children in wooden shoes, after the unnameable atrocities of a brutalized, infuriated, and licentious soldiery, flying before their faces as before a plague!