"ACTIVISTS" MEET OPPOSITION

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Flemish and Walloon provinces, with a German protectorate for Flanders. The secretary authorized this to be done; and shortly after, apparently on the same day, the Council of Flanders proclaimed the independence of the Flemish provinces." January 19, 1918, the Council announced that it would submit to re-election. On the day following, accordingly, some 600 persons, Belgians and foreigners, men, women and children, assembled in a Brussels theater and approved by acclamation, as a kind of entr'acte between speeches, the election of 22 deputies to the Council of Flanders and 52 provincial councillors. It was in this expeditious and happy manner that the people of Brussels, a city of 200,000 electors and more than a million of inhabitants, were permitted to express their will.

PEOPLE MOB FLEMING LEADERS

The greater part of the Flemish people were not content with obtaining, at least in this manner, the "same rights as Poland." Multiplied protests from public bodies flowed in upon the German authorities. Small groups of "Activists," attempting to celebrate the independence of Flanders, were mobbed in Antwerp, Brussels, Malines and Turnhout, in spite of the presence of German troops. February 7, 1918, the Court of Appeals in Brussels ordered the prosecution of "Activist" leaders; and two members of the "Provincial Government of Flanders," Borms and Tack (two of the famous seven), were arrested and arraigned for treason. At this point the German authorities intervened. Borms and Tack were released; three Belgian judges were arrested and taken to Germany; the Court of Appeals was suspended on the ground of having associated itself with political manifestations; and the Communal Councils were in future forbidden, perhaps in accordance with the

1 Brand Whitlock to the Secretary of State, February 23, 1918; protest of the Belgian Senators and Deputies (no date).

A declaration of the Council of Flanders of June 20, 1918, printed in the Frankfurter Zeitung, June 25, states that the Council declared the independence of Flanders on December 22, 1917. The Belgian Information Service, Release of March 31, gives the date as January 14, 1918.

Brand Whitlock to the Secretary of State, February 23, 1918; protest of the Belgian Senators and Deputies; Belgian Information Service, Release of March 31.

principle of the self-determination of nations, to deliberate upon the question of Flemish autonomy.1

As soon as the Court of Appeals was suspended, the judges of all the Belgian courts, from the Supreme Court down to the Justices of the Peace, refused to continue their functions; whereupon the governor general announced, March 26, 1918, that in order to assure the maintenance of public order, in conformity with Art. 43 of the Hague Conventions, "the military Kommandaturs are charged with the duty of repressing crimes and delinquencies." Early in April German civil and criminal courts were accordingly established in Belgium. In these courts the judges were Germans, and justice was rendered in the German language and according to the procedure of the imperial German civil and penal codes. It was announced that these courts would continue until such time as the Belgian judges might "enter upon their duties." 2

Such was the state of affairs in Belgium. The "artificial creation of European diplomacy” known as the Belgian state has been broken up by processes natural and peculiar to the Germans; and the Flemish people, whose independence has been declared under the sanction of the German military authorities, are at last possessed of those rights and liberties which Prussian Poland has so long enjoyed.

V. GERMAN POLICY IN RESPECT TO BELGIUM

In all German discussions of the terms of peace in Belgium, the vital consideration, at least with those whose opinion carries weight in official circles, was this: Belgium must under no circumstances become an economic or a political dependency of France and England. To this statement, which is only another way of saying that Belgium must become a dependency of Germany, all parties were agreed.

1 Brand Whitlock to the Secretary of State, February 23, 1918; Belgian Information Service, Release of March 31.

Brand Whitlock to the Secretary of State, March 13, 1918; Belgian Information Service, Release of March 31; New York Times Current History, August, 1918, 333-334.

GERMANY'S "SACRED DUTY"

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As to the means of accomplishing this end, opinion divided. The moderate opinion may be represented by Hans Delbrück, the distinguished professor of history at Berlin. Professor Delbrück opposed annexation, but he said that the "restoration of liberty" did not mean the "restoration of the state of things before the war." The status quo ante had been made an "obsolete proposition. . . . The administrative division between the Flemish and Walloon regions . . . cannot be undone again, and must have the most powerful effects. Even if, after we have evacuated Belgium, a certain reaction of the idea of Belgian unity sets in against the Flemish manifestos of independence, . . nevertheless, when a movement of this kind has once been set going, it has a very marked vitality of its own . . . and will tend to prevent Belgium from becoming a mere dependency of the Anglo-French alliance." These were the moderate views in Germany.

Over against the moderates stand the extreme annexationists, whose ideas are nowhere better expressed than by Freiherr von Bissing, the late governor general of Belgium, who has left us, in his political "Testament," a deliberate and reasoned statement of what he considered the "sacred duty" of Germany in respect to the future disposition of Belgium. Having discussed the great importance of Belgium for Germany, both in a military and an cconomic sense, he reaches this precise conclusion:

"Belgium must be seized and held, as it now is, and as it must be in future. . . . For years to come we must maintain the existing state of dictatorship. . . . Germany is strong enough, and it is to be hoped that, especially after this war, she will have plenty of efficient men to do in Belgium, in a German sense, what unfortunately was not done in Alsace and Lorraine. Surely we shall have learnt from the mistakes that were made, and we shall never again have recourse to the vacillating policy of conciliation which was so disadvantageous, not only in Alsace-Lorraine, but also in Poland. . . . Half measures and a middle course must be condemned most of all." 2

Preussische Jarrbücher, February, 1917, quoted in Waldstein, What Germany is Fighting For, 23-24.

General von Bissing's Testament, 15, 20, 24, 27.

Such measures would require patience, resolution and sacrifice, since no people "which has been appointed to play a creative part in the history of the world will find pigeons dropping already roasted into its mouth"; but such measures are necessary because "a restored Belgium, whether declared a neutral country or not, will not only be forced over naturally into the camp of our enemies, but will be actually drawn over by them." These were the extreme views in Germany.

GERMANY SOUGHT CONTROL.

The later policy of the German Government lay somewhere between these two extremes: it did not contemplate annexing Belgium, as Bissing advised; it did not apparently share Professor Delbrück's faith that the separation of Flanders and Wallonia would have a "marked vitality of its own" if German influence were entirely withdrawn. The precise object, as the German Government saw it, appeared to be this: to restore Belgian "independence," and yet retain a degree of influence in Belgium which would make it a military or an economic dependency of Germany. This object it hoped to attain by creating, during the war, a situation in Belgium which would enable the German Government, at the peace conference (in that kleinem Kreise-(narrow circle) -of which Chancellor Hertling spoke so often), to demand the continued separation of Belgium and Flanders, on the ground that this was the wish of the Flemish people themselves. Thus Belgium would be "restored"; and thus Germany would obtain its "guaranties" against England and France.

This interpretation of German policy is in harmony with Chancellor Hertling's official statements, and particularly with his last statement—that of July 11, 1918. It is borne out by the whole policy of the German Government in Belgium since the war began. It is particularly confirmed by a recent declaration of the "Council of Flanders" (a very reliable mouthpiece of the German Government), and by a semi-official comment on the declaration which was published in Germany at the same time.

FLANDERS A GERMAN "DEFENSE"

337 The declaration of the Council of Flanders is dated June 20, 1918, and the essential parts of it are as follows:

"Our Flemish people are a disinterested and oppressed people. The supremacy for centuries of a nationality essentially different from ours, has stifled in their descendants the heart beat of fathers who once enriched Europe with their superabundance of vigor and power. But the eye that is able to distinguish the character of our people, the ear that knows its voice, will now recognize that the nature of our people is again forcing its way to the surface. . . . In spite of the difficult conditions in which the occupying power finds itself, the German Government has made possible for the Flemings the realization of a great part of their wishes in respect to language, schools, and administration. The Belgian Government on the contrary has had only an arrogant 'No' for all the wishes of the Flemish people. . . . Therefore, we all know that a Belgian Government restored to its former position of power, even if, at the time of peace negotiations, a golden bridge of beautiful promises to the Flemings were constructed, will nevertheless bring to us Flemings only Belgian hatred, to our civilization French ridicule, to our national life English tutelage, and to our economic life American capital with American creditors. .

Situated economically, politically and strategically at the threshold of Germany, Flanders knows that its independence is a real defense for Germany, but also that it can be realized only by German aid. This independence will be a secure and ever unassailable basis of our national life only if it is a political independence, with our own legislative bodies, our own government and our own judicial power, and making it possible for us so to shape our political, economic, and cultured development as the natural destiny of our country and people demands. In full consciousness of responsibility to our people, we therefore believe that the freeing of Flanders from every foreignizing force signifies also the freeing of Germany from hostile threat in the west."

'Frankfurter Zeitung, June 25, 1918.