Evening star., 1923-01-07
BY FRANK G. CARPENTER.


'Tis the voice of the sluggard; I heard him
''You have walked me too soon, must slumber
walked by his garden and saw the wild
The thorn and the thistle grew broader and
higher.
n r the ghost of Isaac Watts. after
it's one hundred and seventy odd
years of heavenly wanderings,
could return to his native land,
it would find about the same condi-
tion in. England that he described
in 'The Sluggard" Hundreds of
thousands there are idle and some of
them refuse to work. educated to
idleness by the government doles.
Could Watts ghost fly across the
North sea to Belgium it would be
amazed at the thrift I see all around
me. At the close of the war Bel
gium was in many respects worse on
than England, France or the United
states In each of the latter coun-
tries the Industrial machinery was
in full swing. It had been speeded
tip by the war and the foreign mar
kets were open. Belgium, owing to
InG herman OCCupdIlOIlJ ido ASSN ehAA
its markets. The war had taken a
large part of it's workers. Some had
been killed, some deported by the
Germans, and many educated to idle
ness by the charities Of their own
government and those which came
from the United States and other
parts of the world. Before the war
Belgium had depended largely on
German capital to finance her indus
tries. After the armistice the little
kingdom awoke to find herself out
of money. short of men and with
most of her industrial plants either
destroyed or carried away.
x x !: X
VXTHAT did she do? Did she play
w the part of the sluggard? No!
She rolled up her sleeves, took her
spade and hoe in hand, bent her back,
dug her bare toes into the rich, al
luvial soil under her feet and went
to work. She borrowed money from
her own people at home and got lot
from abroad on the basis of the peace
treaty which provided that Germany
should pay her reparation damages
in advance of France and the rest of
the allies. She instituted new taxes
and surtaxes. and at the end of 1919
found that her national revenues were
$20,o00,000 more than had been esti-
mated. In the meantime she had got
ten back the bulk of her workers and
had stopped the drift toward pauper-
ism that charity brings. She raised
wages, put her laborers to work on
irhr 70 iIrnadG n
lied combination of 800 co-opera-
tive societies to do building. and sent
out men to scour Germany and bring
back some of the machinery that had
been stolen and taken away.
Already more than six hundred and
fifty of the public buildings of the
devastated area have been rebuilt, and
even two years ago something like
fifteen thousand machines had been
recovered. BY the end of 1920 about
eight thousand tons of stolen ma
terial and ninety thousand tons of
machinery had been recaptured from
Germany. Every industrial establish
ment prepared to get back to work,
and by January, 1920, more than two
thirds had begun operations and
more than one thousand were filling
orders. Today the industries of Bel
gium have been practically restored.
The country is on it's feet, and only a
part of the homes and buildings OF
the battle-scarred area await recon
struction.
But first let he say a few words
about the Belgian people. They are
about the busiest, and ] might say
also the thriftiest of all the nations
on earth. They have here a country
which is just about one-fourteenth
the size of California, but so thickly
populated that If California could
have the same number for every
square mile it would contain more
people than we have in the Union. II
the main body of the United States
were as thickly settled as Belgium it
would have two hundred million more
people than the whole human race.
The population here is 658 per
square mile, over twice that of Ger
many, and just twice that OF Great
Britain and ireland. The only coun-
try that approaches Belgium in dem
sity is Holland, which has 122 less
people for every $40 acres inside its
boundaries.
Most of the Belgians live in vii
lagos and work on the land. There
are only four cities of more than
one hundred thousand inhabitants.
Brussels, the largest and finest, with
it's suburbs is almost as big as st.
Louis; Antwerp is the size of Gin
cinnati and Ghent and Liege have
about the same population as Mem
phis Malines has sixty thousand.
Bruges is a bit smaller, and Ostend
and Louvain smaller still.
These people, so closely crowded
together, are rich in comparison with
most of humanity. Before the war
the savings banks took In every
year several hundred million dollarR
Today more than half of the school
children have their own savings bank
,books and the deposits OF the pri-
mary students amount to more than
\ five dollars each.-The people are well
clad, and however lean they may
have been during the war. they run
to fat now.
have told you something Of these
farms that raise twice as much grain
to the acre as we do. There are
patches which produce two tons of
tobacco or eight hundred bushels OF
carrots per acre. am told that prior
to 1914 a farmer was able to support
himself, his wife and three children
on less than three acres, and any
surplus of land brought clear profit.
u 4 X y
DELGIUM has also coal and iron.
ID Before the war it was selling