THE BELGIANS.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 290, 23 September 1915, Page 4

THE BELGIANS.

(To the Editor),

J »Sir,—l liope you will grant me sr/aco , to say a few 'words about the Belgians I still in Belgium. The admirable «f----forts of the National Committee few Relief in Belgium are going a Jong way to avert famine, but if the million-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 u nterer.wearmess in •well-doing, produced not by any intellectual difficulty but, by such wholly unintellectual things as time and fatigue. I think, therefore,, the best way of preyentii{g3 any possible neglect of : so great a' matter is to repeat once more the great truths upon which [ rested the whole original claim, not so j much on our sympathy as on our common honesty. The simplicity and cnorj mity of the' Belgian story can boat be • set forth, perhaps, in four truisms, all toweringly self-evident. First, of course, the mere badness of ,):lie story-is almost too big tm be held in the mind. There have? been stories Jof a woman or a child actually robbed of reason for life by the niere ocular shock of some revolting cruelty done in their presence. There was really a danger of something of the kind paralysing our protest against the largest and, by the help of God, the last of the crimes of the Prussian Kings. The onlookers might have been struck into a sort of gibbering imbecility and even amiability, by the. full and indefensibl!e 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 occupation of Belgium; almost the only act in history for which ‘there was unite simply and literally nothing to be said. ■Bad history is the whole basis of Prussia: but e%'en in bad history the Prussians could find no precedent, and no palliation: and the more intelligent Prussians did not try. A few were so feeble-minded as to say they had found dangerous documents in Brussels, as if what they had done could possibly be excused, by things they did not know when they did it. This almost piteous lapse in argument was, however, covered up by the cleverer Prussians as quickl}' as might be. They prepared to stand without a rag of reason on them than with such a rag as that. Before we come to the monstrous material suffering, there is in the existing situation an abstract unreason, nay an abstract insanity, which the brain of man must hot bear. A' nightmare must not abide to the end. The tiniest trace of Prussian victory that remains will make us'think of something which.is not to be thought of: of something like ;‘the victory of the beasts over mankind.

Second, it must be remembered that this murder has been done upon a people of such proximity and familiarity that there cannot be any mistake about the matter. There'is some shadowy justification for the' comparative "indifference to the wrongs of very remote peoples: for it is not easy for 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-historie cruelty coming suddenly upon a scene which was civilised and almost commonplace. Imagine tigers breaking out of the Zoological Gardens and eating all the people in Albany Street; imagine Eed Indians exhibited at Olympia literally scalping every passerby . from that place to Hammersmith Broadway; imagine Jack the Ripper crowned king of Whitechapel! and conducting his 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, fearful Belgian'- scene in .that fa mi la r Belgian scenery. . It is idle to, talk of exaggerations ,or .misrepresentations about a Case so close to its. Chinese tortures may, not bo.-quite so fantastic as -travellers tell us; Siberia may not bo so desolate as its fugitives say itas; but, we could no more invent such a massacre ..in Belgium than we could, a massacre in Balhanl. The things of shameless .shame that have been done are something. worse, than prodigies,, worse than nightmares, worse than devilries; they are facts. , - ■ •

Third, this people Tie have heard of daily have endured, this unheard of thing; and endured it for?-us.-,There are countless, cases, for compassion among the bewildering and heartrending byproducts of thiswar: but this is not a casefor compassion. This is a case that for mere working •minimum of a sense of honour that makes us repay a poor man who has advanced his last penny to post a letter we have forgot-, ten to stamp, In this respect Belgium stands alone; and the claims even of l other Allies may well' stand aside till \ nVs is paid to the uttermost, farthing. 1 Th»rc ha-y been self-sacrifice every-

I where else; but it of individuals, each for'his'own country; the Serbian dying for Serbia, or tAe Italian for Italy. But the Belgian did not merely die for Belgium. Belgium died for Europe. Not only was dhe soldier sacrificed for the nation; the’nation was sacrificed for mankind. It is a, sacrifice' which is, I think, quite Cfnique even among Christians; and quite inconceivable among pagans. If wer ! even privately utter a murmur, or even privately grudge a penny for binding the wounds' of so Solitary and oxceptTonal a, martyr, we ourselves shall bo something almost as solitary and exWe shall perhaps be nearest to; the state- of that unspeakablesociologist who persuaded his wife to partake- of a simultaneous suicide; and then himself cheerfully lived oh. Fourth; If there be anyone on this earth who d'oes not find the final success of sucTr' crime "more than the mind can bear; if there- be- ! anyone who does V not feeh it as - the- more graphic since it *’ walks among the tramway lines and ” lamp-posts of a ■rife 1 like 1 our own; If there, be anyone who does not feel that ' to .be caught napping about Belgium is like being caught robbing one v s mother on: her death-bed; there still remains a sort of brutal compassion for bodily Pain, which lias been half-admitted hero 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 said of us we left it to the very butchers of this nation to see that did not bleed to death.

I therefore" plead further helip for the Members of the National Committee 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, Beaconsfield, Bucks. sth August, 1915.