Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-08-17
BL FRANK H. SIMONDs.

w WHILE all along the Eastern
n seaboard of the United
wv States there is this year a
flood of tercentenary cele-
brations Europe is having
its own centennial obServances. A hun
dred years ago last month the July
revolution in Paris opened the first
breach in the structure of the Congress
of Berlin and started the hegira OF
Kings, which ended only in 1918, when
the Kaiser and the Emperor, the HapS-
burg and the Hohenzollern, took the
road which the last of the Bourbon
Kings to reign in France followed in
1880.
This European anniversary is inter
esting from many aspects in contem-
porary Europe-firSt, perhaps, because
one of the immediate consequences was
the formation of the Belgian kingdom
which played so considerable a role in
The Wcrld War. Nor is it less interest
e2g as an evidence of how Short-lived,
after all, are the decisions based upon
victory and imposed upon reluctant
peoples by the force of bayonets.
The Congress of Vienna seated Louis
XVIII upon the throne of France; it
flung low the Low Countries. which had
been Spanish, Austrian. and during the
revolutionary and Napoleonic periods
which was foredoomed to disintegrate,
given the racial and religious differ
enceS between Belgian and Dutchman.
Fifteen years later the successor of the
last Louis fed before the Paris mob and
French troops marched across the bat
tlefields of Waterloo to besiege Ant
werp and complete the liberation of
Belgium.
Faced by New War.
For moment Europe was faced by
q new war for the Belgians offered
themselves to France, but Louis Phil
ippe. newly come to the throne. had
no stomach for Napoleonic adventure,
and In due course of time Belgium was
established as separate kingdom,
guaranteed by Prussia and by Britain
guaranteed in that famous document
which was the fatal scrap of paper"
in 1914.
Contrary to European fears, too, Bel
GUM did not become a mere satellite
OF France. although Brussels more and
more took on the appearance of a
little Paris. Belgium evolved as a
political unit, conscious of its own
nationality and prepared to defend its
independence, as was disclosed in the
opening days of the World War
Yet it would be inexact to say that
the domestic history of Belgium has
been uniformly happy. The national
motto, Union Makes Force" has been
rarely lived up to in the internal strug-
gle between the two major races of the
little state-the Flemish, who are Teu-
tonic, and the Walloons who are
French. And it is this circumstance
which gives particular point of Belgian
example now.
In 1880 the Walloons were top dogs. I"
For centuries they had been the more
influential race. Hatred of the Dutch,
who figured as the oppressors, had
naturally weakened the situation of the
Flemings, who spoke a German dialect
hardly different from the Low German
of Holland. Through the first half
century of Belgian history the WAL
looms were dominant.
In more recent years, however, there
has been striking renaissance of the
F1emings. More numerous, they have
increasingly exploited their majority at
the polls, and parallel with the political
has zone the cultural development.
French World Language.
The dificulty, of course, is that
French Is a world language. Flemish,
and even Dutch, to which it is closely
related. is spoken by relatively few.
Necessarily, therefore, French has pre-
vailed as the language of commerce
and of business. as it is the tongue of
the industrial areas of Belgium. Yet
Flemish had made its way at home,
and even Powered into a considerable
literary development.