SOME LESSONS FROM BELGIUM

New Zealand Tablet, 8 April 1915, Page 55

SOME LESSONS FROM BELGIUM

American travellers in Europe, observing the number of beggars in certain Catholic countries, have written or spoken as if beggary and Catholicity were inseparably allied; indeed, many of them have not hesitated to assert that the beggary was due to Catholicity. Now Belgium was (and is, despite its present unfortunate condition), a country overwhelmingly Catholic in faith (says the Sacred Heart Review). Before the war, out of a population of more than 7,000,000, there were only about 28,000 Protestants, and 13,000 Jews. Yet one might travel the length and breadth of Belgium without being asked for an alms. There was no mendicancy. There was a totalabsence of any sign of poverty. Now, not every beggar is an impostor, but there is a strong suspicion that the energy put into ' panhandling ' might be expended with more beneficent results if directed into other channels. In London every year it is calculated that some million pounds are given to undeserving beggars, but in Belgium labor was provided for people of this class, and those who would not work were taken and put into a labor area, where they were compelled to work. In this way impostors were kept off the streets. A hardworking, hardheaded, progressive people, the Catholic people of Belgium did not attain the prosperity that blessed them, before the storm of war burst upon them, without exerting themselves. Nature was not over-kind to Belgium. An Irish writer, holding up tho case of Belgium before Ins own countrymen as an example, said: ' In the first place, their land, or a great portion of it, did not promise much. It was of a marshy nature, but the people with that intense love of country set to work the land itself, and step by step they wrung from an unwilling nature innumerable treasures. It was said that they reclaimed a quarter million acres of sand and marshy land and turned it into a fertile Soil. It was stated by authorities on the subject that the land worth .£6 an acre increased in value to £6O an acre. The condition of the people improved as time went on. In like manner they undertook what was quite new to the world, the nationalisation of their railways, and to-day Belgium owned her own railway system, the mileage of which was far greater than that of England—4ooo miles of heavy railways and two or three thousand miles of light railways. The country was one ramification of railway lines. The commerce of the country developed, and the earnings on the railways were able to pay the interest on the national debt. In no country in the world could one travel with greater facility and at such a cheap rate as in Belgium. The whole railway system of the country could be travelled over by train for nine francs, or 7s 6d night and day, for a week. It could be therefore seen what an immense advantage the railway system was to the commerce of the country, and the general progress of the country was brought about by the courage of the people in facing and successfully accomplishing railway nationalisation.' A Catholic people thiswith 5419 secular priests; 6237 priests of religious Orders, dwelling in 293 religious houses : and 29,303 Brothers and nuns of various Orders; in 2207 monasteries and convents—a Catholic people living an intense religious Catholic life ; and yet making their country, for its size, the most prosperous and the most progressive in the world. V