Semi-weekly herald., 1914-08-17
PEACEFUL BELGIANS 20 CEN
TURIES HAVE FOUGHT TO
PROTECT LIBERTIES.
(By Hugh O'Neill.)

The Belgians are great fighters.
They are warlike but not military
people. They are lovers of liberty
They are merchants, artists, mechan-
les, miners, farmers. They breathe
the "burgher spirit" which made the
Puritans of New England strong and
made the cities of England free even
in the golden days of Feudalism.
The Belgians proved their courage
against the Romans 1000 years ago.
They proved it in the Crusades. They
proved it 700 years and more ago
when they helped the English to drive
the Moors from Portugal. They prov
ed it in the fourteenth century against
the mobiles, knights, squires and SOL
diers of Philip af France, when,
burghers and tradesmen, and nothing
more, they defeated their oppressors
and hung seven thousand golden
spurs as trophies in the cathedral of
Courtrai. They proved it in the eigh-
teenth century when they revolted,
for time, from the great power of
Austria and established the United
States of Belgium. They proved it
later against the Dutch, when, in the
"ten days war;" eighteen hundred
Belgian "tradesmen soldiers" held
twenty-five thousand of the army of
Holland at bay for ten days, and won
by that resistance the final freedom
of Belgium. And they are proving
it now against the mighty arms of
Germany in way that has won for
them the friendship of the world.
Caesar tried out the temper of the
men of the "Belgic land" when he
was on his way to conquer Britain.
In those days they were called the
Nervii. But they were then what
they are now, Walloons, or Celtic,
and Flemings, or Germanic, in their
race. When they learned that the
Romans were coming the Belgians
sent their old men and women and
children into the forests for safety.
Then they went out to meet Caesar
and his legions. And not one of them
returned alive. Caesar conquered, but
Caesar only won when there were no
more Belgians left to fight him. And,
mindful of that quality in this fear
less people, Caesar made their land
unit in his empire.
Clovis, the Frank, drove the Ro-
mans out of Belgium in the sixth CEN
tury, and Charlemagne, conquering it
about 800 A. D., made it an independ-
ent state of his holy Roman empire.
They say now that Charlemagne was
Belgian, born in Liege, and they
have great horsed statue of him
there in the Place d'Auray. After
him it lay and fell and rose again,
beneath the drums and tramplings
of many conquests." But always the
heart of this people was stout and
their courage of the stubborn kind,
and even when Europe was divided up
between the three sons of the great
emperor, and the spirit of their father
was but memory. these burghers of
Belgium stood solid for their rights
and wrested from their conquerors the
keys of liberty.
Almost 200 years before the Eng
lish won Magma Charta the Belgians
wrested from Count Baldwin vi. that
treaty of Brammont" which made
them free, in day Of many tyrannies
to run their cities as they thought
best. In the fourteenth century they
threw off the yoke of France in a
great battle of two days, where man
to man and in soldiers fight' they
proved their awful valor and spared
not until the last dead lay before
them.
Philip Of France and his army were
occupying" Belgium then. There was