THE BELGIAN FACTOR BY WICKHAM STEED LAST month I was invited to address the Belgian Association of Liberal Journalists on the present British view of the international situation. In particular, I was expected to say what people in England think about the Franco-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr. My Belgian colleagues knew that I had, for years, consistently opposed the occupation of the Ruhr, not out of tenderness towards Germany but because I doubted its efficacy as a means of securing a prompt settlement of the German Reparations debt, and also because I feared it might involve for France so serious an entanglement in the industrial and financial affairs of Germany as to endanger French economic independence. Nevertheless they wished to hear what I might have to say in explanation of British detachment from Franco-Belgian policy. What I said to them is of little moment; but what I learned in Brussels, from them and from eminent Belgians whom I met, is of more than personal interest. Hardly had I reached Brussels than I became aware that things felt different from what they had seemed to be in London. There was something almost tangible in the very atmosphere of the Belgian capital that made the question of the Ruhr and the whole problem of dealing with Germany appear in another light. I became conscious of this difference before I had exchanged a word on politics with any Belgian. What could it be? As I wondered, it dawned upon me that Brussels had lain for more than four long years under the German heel which had trodden into Belgian minds an impression not lightly to be effaced. This very obvious reflection struck me, if not as a discovery, yet as a reminder how easy it is for nations to lose touch with each other, and not only nations but individual citizens of neighbouring countries even when it is their business to know something of each other's affairs. True, I had not actually been in Belgium VOL. CCXVIII.-NO. 812 since the summer of 1920. But the geographical distance between England and Belgium is less than one hundred miles, and intercourse between Brussels and London is constant. Moreover, England came into the War because Germany would not undertake to respect Belgian neutrality which Prussia and England alike had bound themselves in 1839 to respect and to uphold. During the War many thousands of Belgian refugees found asylum in England while the British and the Belgian armies fought side by side to keep one small corner of Belgium inviolate. Thus there ought to have been no room in any Englishman's mind for a misunderstanding of the Belgian position. Yet I had forgotten, as an essential factor of the present European situation, the effect of the German occupation of Belgium; and, not a little ashamed of this forgetfulness, I pondered over the difference between actual experience and merely intellectual recognition of an historical fact. It was the old story of the toad beneath the harrow. Though London was raided by German aircraft more than a hundred times during the War; though her tale of dead and maimed reached a respectable total; though innocent English fishing villages and inoffensive bathing resorts were bombarded without warning by German warships, British resentment against Germany has ceased to be a dynamic, everyday feeling-whereas, in Brussels, I became aware that hatred of Germany is so strong as to pervade the very air of the place. The explanation, I thought, must lie in the circumstance that, in Belgium, the Germans were there all the time, asserting their supremacy without intermission, while to England they came swiftly, did what destruction they could, and departed with equal speed. But, on inquiry, I found that this was not the only reason for the bitterness that was in the air. The chief reason was that the bulk of the Belgian people, Walloons and Flemings alike, who had been actually under the Germans throughout the War, had seen and suffered from the deporta tions. Again, to my shame, I had forgotten the deportations. At the mention of them, a vision arose in my mind of tens of thousands of Belgians, driven into open cattle trucks by night and day, kept there in sleet and hail without food, and carried off into German slavery. Then I understood Belgian feeling. No special emphasis was laid upon the deportations by the responsible Belgians who spoke of them. They were referred to as a fact which none could leave out of account. "The curious thing," said one Belgian statesman, "is that comparatively little hatred of the Germans remains in the men who fought against them in the War, nor is it very strong among those who sought refuge abroad. It is in the mass of the people who witnessed and felt the German methods of oppression that the very name of Germany is abhorred; and their abhorrence affects the position of our Government. Belgian public feeling is more vigourously and persistently anti-German than that even of France except, possibly, in centres like Lille where conditions were similar to those in Belgium. However earnestly the Government may, for economic and other reasons, desire a prompt and satisfactory settlement of the Reparations question, they cannot ignore the national temper which, indeed, is an important factor in their whole policy." Lest I should again forget, I took some pains to look up the records. No fewer than 160,000 Belgians were carried away to forced labour in Germany. Many died; and 33,000 returned with their health permanently undermined. One hundred sixty thousand in a population of some 8,000,000 gives two per cent of active centres of resentment, without reckoning the vicarious resentment of relatives and friends. Add 23,700 Belgians shot by the Germans or dead in German gaols, and 78,000 whose houses were destroyed. Alongside these totals, the 40,000 who were killed in war or died of wounds and the 36,000 wounded, seem of secondary importance. What is more natural than that the survivors of the deportees and their families should feel little compassion for the Germans of the Ruhr, or should think and say that Germany is getting only a fraction of what she deserves? As though to drive home the lesson I had learned or re-learned, I found myself one morning held up for nearly an hour in the streets of Brussels by a mighty procession of twenty-five thousand ex-deportees who paraded the city while crowds thronged the sidewalks to cheer them. Truly, I thought, the political memo ries of other peoples are short. Here was a demonstration in a European capital with an immediate bearing upon the European situation; yet, so normal did it seem to residents in Brussels, that not a single foreign correspondent reported it to his journal. But, it may be argued, hatred is a sorry counsellor. The peoples of Europe have to live together and must, sooner or later, settle down to business. Belgium cannot exist without foreign trade. Antwerp is a main gateway into and out of Germany. Is it not unwise for a nation to cherish feelings that are at variance with its interests? Would not Belgium do far better to forget (if she cannot forgive); to cultivate a spirit of compromise, and to remember that the free and unguarded international life, into which she entered with the signing of the Versailles Treaty, involves obligations-and risks-weightier than those which she incurred under the settlement of 1839 that made her independent indeed, but neutral? Some experience of international politics has taught me that foreign judgments upon the feelings of nations are apt to be valueless, even if they are not positively harmful irritants. Unwise or not, Belgian feelings towards Germany are comprehensible and, what is more, they are a fact. As a fact, they have to be reckoned with. At the same time it is quite true, as thoughtful Belgians recognize, that Belgium's new responsibility for her own defense enjoins upon her circumspection and careful consideration of the consequences which any policy may entail. "Though old as a people," said one such Belgian, "we are in our infancy as a fullfledged nation. Nearly three generations of an existence hedged about by international treaties led us to regard the letter of our rights as the foremost consideration. A tendency to insist upon our rights, without always pausing to reflect whether we could uphold them single-handed, is noticeable even to-day. We shall probably run against many a stone wall before we learn the practical lesson that an apparently unfettered national life has limitations quite as real as the old limitations by treaty. Few regret our lost neutrality or, rather, our newly-won freedom; but not all of us quite understand the implications of freedom. We are no longer a ward of the Great Powers but we have still to learn that, if our former guardians are to welcome us in their midst as fully adult, we must cultivate a sense of adult responsibility." Differences of temperament and language between the Flemish speaking and the French speaking halves of the population render the position of Belgium less simple than that of homogeneous nations; and the political reasons which make the French Alliance acceptable to the country as a whole tend to accentuate the resistance of the Flemings to French influence. A section of the people believes that close relations with England would be even more valuable, because less dangerous, than close relations with France and that, if any of Belgium's powerful neighbours is to have cause for displeasure, it had better not be England. For Belgium, the ideal situation would be one in which France and England were in close agreement with each other and with her. Hence the dismay and irritation that were felt in Belgium when the British Government declined to accompany her and France into the Ruhr. The Belgian Government could not have dissociated itself from French policy even had Belgian national feeling been less potently anti-German than it is, for Belgium is a territorial neighbour of Germany and is bound to France by a defensive military convention. But Belgian industrialists and financiers realize more acutely than those of France the drawbacks and the dangers of the Ruhr policy. They are more dependent than those of France upon foreign trade and they fear the consequences of a protracted deadlock. A great part of the economic hinterland of Belgium lies in Germany. She is now practically severed from it, while the advantages derived from German deliveries of coal and coke, before the occupation of the Ruhr, have ceased or have been curtailed. Nevertheless, there is no weakening in Belgian national support of the Ruhr policy. Whatever sacrifices it involves must, the Belgians feel, be borne until Germany is brought to reason. As in the War, Belgium is determined to hold out until Germany gives way. For Belgium, as for France, the question really at issue in the Ruhr is "Security" quite as much as "Reparation". Whatever financial or economic arrangements Germany may propose for a settlement, will not be thought adequate unless lasting safeguards |