REMINISCENCES OF BRUGES

Hokitika Guardian, 5 January 1917, Page 3

REMINISCENCES OF BRUGES

its Past and Present

(Contributed).

Poor old B.uges! with your oldtime, crooked, cobble-stone streets; with your interlacing canals that in your lustier days carried baiges laden with produce from every mart in Europe and the East to the gablefronted warehouses that have long sires grown old and decrepit, and that now only command the respect that one accords to a veaerab'.e old toiler—those warehouses that were pulsing with the rich life of commerce at a time when young England was glad to find a market for her unmanufactured wool and hides, glad to barter her only exports to eke out sustenance for her scanty population. Those were the days when the Queen of France marvelled at the rich attire of your daughters, and felt hertelf a commoner in their midst. Those were the days when the proud Dukes of Burgundy held their Courts within your walls —when merchant princes vied with each other to secure the privilege of trading in your markets, to grow richer by bartering the manufactured products of Germany for thß products of the East. ’Twas then that you held high your bead, and ranked with proud Venice as a commercial centre. What had you done that Neptune should have withdrawn his friendly arm? For soil was; with the receding of the sea those who had fattened on your bounty left you. The rollicking choruses of the Venetian sailors have centuries since ceased to. echo along your quayr, The Courts have vanished. The merchant princes have gathered up their richis and fled to Antwerp, where the stream of shipping could meet the land-borne commerce.

Y..>un£ England ha* grown < 1 le' - End, profiting by the ioduitrial las-ons of yoar sons, has ceaeed to ship abrjad btr raw product?, And yon, Od Bruges! in ageing thus have grown a beauty all yoar own. Dtfu Old Bruges ! I tLiuk of you as I saw you in the closing months of ’l3. The autumn shadows ■were growing long, and the parting gleam of the westward sun waa glowing ou the old belfry, as we were Bitting in the shade afforded by the awning of the Cafe Du D'Or. I see the passing twos and thr-68 of Euglish trippeig

bßut on absorbing bs much aB possibla ol that subtle influence which only such 89 you Old Brnge.-! can dispense - snatching & d-iy from ths'r all too brief stay at Oatend, betore returning fcj tbs dreb routine to E igli 'h homelift. 1 se.i the avore leisure i party of moto-ist* who come ton'ing across the eqna.e to pu 11 do for jei'ie jhments while the uti re y tnthful imaabeis of the party “co” ns the old -Halle, or may be to revel as we so often did, in the sweet melod-oas carillon of its in-

corn par-bie chinns Whiia resting thus we hear the approach of military strains, and emerging from the narrow busy street on onr right comes into view a regiment of infantry. Sweeping ecioss the nld niaket place towards the Rue D’Araenai they go, and one cannot help noticing in their sunburnt faces an earnestness and confidence which commandß one’s respect and admiration. Those sturdy lads may be travel stained, their green h ; da knapsacks may not be the most artistic of their kind, but one feeds that the proud bearing of theii officers is not the arrogance of rank, but that it emanates from the consciousness of a reliable following. I see a young mother, dancing in her arms to the thrilling bugle march, her baby-boy whom later, she knows, will probably join such a troop; and many of those who look with pride on their soldiers are thinking of the lad from their fire side who is with the colours.

Do you wonder that all the people turn ont to see the troops go by, where there are snoh Btrong bonds of sympathy ? And while the proud smile, called up by inch thonghts, is on their lips comes the clutch at their hearts by the thought: “ How soon ? For surely there is ever hanging over these peace-loving, industrious people, (My God ! how industrious compared with those in mors favoured climes) tbe cloud of war and desolation. Away from the daily strife ol commerce, where only signs of peace abound, there, as the sower casts the seed, peace or war loom as the greatest factor in shaping the harvest : there as the reaper puts his sickle to the ripened grain, is the ever present thought “Will it be garnered in before they come ? And then again, Old Bruges, from the spirit of whose long buried commerce there was even then budding forth a new era of trade and manufacture,—a springtide of prosperity—encouraged by the recently hewn canal to the sea, at Zeebrngge, hewn to replace the waterway lost four centuries since; a track that would once more bring tbe seaborne oommeroe to year willing bands, I try to picture you in tbe closing days of 1914. The old Groole Markt, or market plaoe is filled with troops. There are no pleasure-seekers now. Those sweet old chimeß are hußhed; and from the tower, where one once saw sueh an expanse of meadow and cornland, one now sees hurryiDg hordes of country folk fbeing, they scarce know whither j and away to the north-east, where the shades of eveuing should be soothing lli9 weary toiler to rest, there come* the din of battle; and the lurid glow bespeaks where the sacrificial fires to the god of war liy waste the homes of thoae fiaeing hordes. The young mother, who danced her baby-boy to the military march, etraiua him to her heart while she clutche3 a few treaBures’—how few to choose from; how

vory few cau she gather ! —and harries to Eeek safety—where ? And'you, Old Bruges!, shall yon, too, be trampled under foot to satiate tli9 war- Inst of that unspeakable tyrant ? Shall no sanctity be granted to this cradle of Flemish att? Shall those gems of the old masters be given up to pillage ? Wbat! Shall we, who in our commercial infanoy drew sustenance from yonr breast: whose first tottering steps along the path of manufacturing industries were guided by yonr maternal hands, shall we now stand idly bye and see yon perish—crushed "bleeding to the ground because you sought to shield ua from destruction ?

Do we not know that your unavenged wrorg foreshadows a Bimilar fate for ourselves ? Do we cot feel how yon mourned for ns when, within sight of your old walls, the wiper struck Captain Fryatt cf the S.S. “Brussels”— shot him in cold blood because he had previously dared to escape from a submarine ? We know that your soil has been eanotified for all time by a British martyr’s blood. If not our veneration, if rot onr gratitude, if- cot our devotion to our murdered kinsman’s mamoiy, then snrely our selfishness shoald g.ve a ready answer to the. questions eo thrust upon us, and keep ns steafast in our re.olve to wipe the Hunnish stain off every foot of Belgian soil. Peace ! is it! Aye ! bnt first with onr own conscience —secured only by a sacred duty performed. And you, Old Bruges !- shell live again. , W.J.B.