THE BELGIANS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXVIII, Issue 14, 15 September 1915, Page 5

THE BELGIANS.

AN APPEAL FROM ENGLAND. BELGIUM DIED FOR EUROPE. “THE BLOW FROM HELL.’’ FOUR TRUISMS. [To The Eoitoe Stiuteoed Pobt.]Sir, —I hope you will grant me space to say a few words about the Belgans still in Belgium. The admirable efforts of the National Committee for Hel’ef in Belgium' ane going a long way to avert famine, but if the millioii-and-a-half destitute Belgians are to be kept alive the National Committee must have yet further support. The only conceivable cause of doubt in the matter must lie in a mere weariness in well-doing, produced not by any intellectual difficulty but by such wholly unintellectual things as time and fatigue., 1 think, therefore, the best way of preventing any possible neglect ot so great a matter is to repeat once more the great truths upon which rested the whole original claim, not so much on our sympathy as on our common honesty. The simplicity and enormity of the Belgian story can best be set forth, perhaps, in lour truisms, all toweringly self-evident.

First, of cotyrsd, |he mere badness oT the story is at mdse too big to be held in the mind. There have been stories of. a woman or a child actually robbed of reason for life by the mere ocular shock of some revolting cruelty done in their presence. There was really a danger of something of the kind paralysing bur protest against the largest and, by the help of God, the last ot the crimes of the Prussian Kings, The onlookers might have been struck into, a sort of glibhering imbecility and even amiability, by the full and indefensible finality of the foul stroke. We had no machines that could measure the stunning directness of the blow from hell. We could hardly realise an enormous public act which the actor did not wish to excuse, but only to execute. Yet such an act was the bdeuipation 'of Belgium; almost, the only aft in history’ for which there wa|', quite simply and literally nothing tp bp said. Bad history is the whole basis' orPi'ftssih: but even in bad history the i Prussians could find no precedent ajnd no palliation: and the more intelligent Prussians did not jlc * y few were so feeble-minded as. to say they had found dapgerous Whits'-id 'Brussels; as ‘ Stine coufd possibly be exbuked by things they did not know when’ they did it. This , almost piteous lapse' m ! aiVinieftt was," however, covered up by the cleyerer Prussians as quickly as might be. They;i«-efen‘ed to stand I without a rag' of reason on ; them than with such a rag as that. Beloie \\e come to the monstrous material suffering, there is in the existing situation an abstract imr^^on,,nay s .uiJ abstract insanity, which the brain ot man must Shot bear. A nightmare must not itbide to the end. Hie tiniest trace Iff Prussian victory that remains will|make us think of some ■tiling which is not to be thought of; |>l something like the victory of the agists over! mankind. J Second, ii must he remembered this murdeillias been done upon a peo- i pie of sucli| proximity and that there I cannot he any about the piatter. There is some | .shadowy justification for the camparative indifference to the wrongs of very remote peoples: for it is not easj ioi us to guess how much slavery shocks a negro or cannibalism a cannibal. But the innkeepers and shopkeepers of Ostend felt exactly as the innkeepers and shopkeepers of Dover would feel. We have to imagine a pre-histone cruelty coming suddenly upon a scene winch was civilised and almost commonplace. Imagine tigers breaking out of the Zoological Gardens and eating all the people in Albany Street; imagine Red Indians exhibited at Olympia literally scalping every passer-by from that place to Hammersmith Broadway; imagine Jack the Ripper crowned king of Whitechapel and conducting bis executions in broad daylight outside the Tube station at Aldgate; imagine as much as you can of what is violent and contradictory in an over-turn of all modern life by troglodytes; and you are still falling short of this tearful Belgian scene in that familiar Belgian scenery. It is idle to talk of exaggeiations or misrepresentations about a ease so close to us. Chinese tortures may not be quite so fantastic as travellers tell us; Siberia may not be so desolate as its fugitives ««y it is: bin we’couid no more ‘invent such a massacre in Belgium than we could a massacre in Balham. The things ot shameless shame'that have been done are something worse than'prodigies, worse than nightmares, worse than dev i - vies; they are facts. Third, this people we have heard ot daily have endured this unheard , of thing; and endured-it for us. There are countless eases 1 for compassion among the bewildering and heartrending by-products of this war: but t ns lis not a case for compassion. This is a case for that mere working minimum of a sense of honor that makes us repay a poor man who has* advanced his last penny to post a letter we have forgotten to stamp. In tins respect Belgium stands alone; and the claims even of other Allies may well stand aside till she is paid to tl.e uttermost farthing. There has been self-sacrifice, everywhere else; hut it was sell-sacii-fice of individuals, each tor his own country ; the Serbian dying for Serbia, or the Italian for Italy. But the Bel- j giaii did not merely die for Belgium. Belgium died for Europe. Not only was the soldier sacrificed for the nation; the nation was sacrificed for man-

kind. It is a sacrifice which is, 1 I think, quite unique even among Chris** jlians; and quite inconceivable among •pagans. If we even privately utter a 'murmur, or even privately grudge a penny for binding the wounds of so 'solitary and exceptional a martyr, we 'ourselves shall, be something almost as solitary and exceptional. We shall •perhaps be nearest to the state of that unspeakable-sociologist who perjsuaded his wife to partake of a simul'taneons suicide; and then himself [cheerfully lived on. Fourth: If there he anyone on this earth who does not find the final success of such crime more than the mind can bear; if there be anyone who does not feel it as the more grapahic since it walks among the tramway lines and lamp-posts of a life like our own; if 'there be anyone who does not feel that to be caught napping about Belgium is like being caught robbing one’s mother on her death-bed; there still remains a sort of brutal compassion for bodily pain, which has been half--1 admitted here and there even by the oppressors themselves. If we do not 'do a great deal more even than we have already done, it may yet be sakl 'of us that we left it to the very hutch'ers of this nation to see that it did not bleed to death. | I therefore plead for further help for ‘the'Members of the National Commit'tee who have taken this duty upon themselves. All subscriptions can be 'addressed to the Treasurer at Trafalgar Buildings, Trafalgar Square, London, or to Local Committees where they have been-formed. Yours faithfully, G. K. CHESTERTON. Overroads, Beaeonsfield, Bucks, sth August, 1915.