East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current, 1921-11-23
WILLINGNESS TO WORK.
SECRET OF BELG!UMFS
|. REMARKABLE COMEBACK
Little Nation Sets Itself to-
Forget War and Establish
Peace and Social Reform.

BY HUGH REDWOOD
CWritten for international News Ser
vice and London Daily News.)
LONDON. Nov 93-The harhor
station at Ostend is still a place OF
desolation I found it so on recent
visit. There is plenty of splintered
glass in its gaunt arcades, and the
Autumn wind blows coldly over its un-
protected platforms. But as soon as
/ the long train. with its great German
engine and its big, easy coaches pulls
4 out over the new and well-laid track
/ YOU feel i'm your boneS-asSuming i
/ that YOU are wise enough to leave 4
/ Ypres out of your initinerary-that
/ you have come to a Land of Good
= Nope.
The carlton of Rruges echoes across
( a plain that was assuredly never more ,
] fertile and never better titled. From
| the canal bank beside the works OF
| La Brugose. which the Germans
1 stripped bare of their machinery, |
listened to the bells playing GermanI
music one Sunday morning; and later,
1 as | traversed the whole breadth of
Belgium and sought generally in vain,
for traces of the war it seemed to me
that the carlloneur must be something
of a symbOlist.
For Belgium is steadily settling her
self to forget the war. Her ideals of
today are peace with her neighbors
and with all men and social reform
within her own gates To attain these
ends she must trade, to trade she
must work, and she is working as,
| verify believe. no other country is
| working.
| In Ghent and in Brussels they i'm
pressed upon me that cooperation and
communal effort are to be the forces
Of the future. Bolshevism in Belgium
was stllborn. Labor is sane ana
soundly disciplined.
Il talked with the editor of the offl-
cial Labor newspaper in room that
iteslf told me almost as much as he
did. There was a portrait in place
Il OF honor on the wall. Not of I.enln,
| not of Carl Marx, not even of Emile
Vandervelde the Belgian apostle of
cooperation, but of William Morris,
whose dream was of a world made
htdltllul ny ana lbl tue WI hNiH'
on the way from Brussels TO lhege
the express steamed into a lofty sta
tion, bright with the morning sun
shine streaming through clean glass
roof on to paint still cleaner thronged
WITH busy people, humming with the
throttled energy of half Il dozen trains
at it's dozen platforms, outside there
was a pulse in the air as of mighty
loom. and through the mist one caugh'
fleeing glimpses of vast modern fac
torieI in process of erection. Every
thing was eloquent of life and labor
From the railway, at any rate, not one
| single thing was visible to recall The
| years of war and ruin.
stay! There was just one. 1t wa
the name board in the station, whicl
| had been left unpanted, apparent.
| of set purpose, on the faded AM
| scaling wood one might family dis
| II cern. in German characters, the wore
| Lowen. For this was Louyain.
At Iiege, for a mater of . I'D. il
| English money one may spend al
| hour or so upon the broad bosom o
| the Meuse. The Liegois have no eyes
it would seem, for all that one sees
no ears for all that one hears, on tn
| steamer trip to Seraing; yet in tn
| | ceaseless ring of hammers upon ne\
/ steel. in the endless extensions of iro
works. motor works, glass works an
| | the like there is a lesson for the Who'll
of Europe.
II Long live ourselves,' is the sloga
| Of Iiege. The hotel Keepers act II
to it in one way: the workers in an
: other and better.
one disembarks at the Passerell'
and is faced almost Immediately wit
an inscription on a wall table:
In this square. on the night
m August %. 1914, the Germans, with
II out provocation, burnt twenty house
" and shot eighteen people,
Nobody that | saw lifted an eye {
. It. The crowds hurry by, intent upo
81 the astounishinely cheap stalls alon
= the quays.
IL At half-past eight in the morning
hs found myself purchasing a trinket q
a. a jewelers. shop in the Place de Mei
" the Regent street of ANTWERP
hy There had been several other Gus
toners before me. You open early
re | said to the proprietor,
on Monsieur" he replied with SUI
prising earnestness. lit is my way
on protecting against the tendencies
d. the times. open at s a, m.-somt
he times earler-and ! close at 10 p. II
IL sometimes later. And no weekend
L. Cthis. very pointedly, in English). Bl