Beautiful Europe - Belgium | Page 4

of accomplishing its frightful destiny--no treaty, or
"scrap of paper," is potent to preserve this last, and weakest, of all the
nations of Western Europe from drinking to the dregs the cup of ruin
and desolation. Tragic indeed in the profoundest sense--in the sense of
Aristotle--more tragic than the long ruin of the predestined house of
Oedipus--is this accumulated tragedy of a small and helpless people,
whose sole apparent crime is their stern determination to cling at any

cost to their plighted word of honour. I have been lately glancing into a
little book published about five years ago, in which a view is taken of
the Belgian character that no one could term indulgent. "It is curious,"
says the writer in one place, "how few Belgians, old or young, rich or
poor, consider the feelings or convenience of others. They are intensely
selfish, and this is doubtless caused by the way in which they are
brought up." And, again, in another chapter, he insinuates a doubt as to
whether the Belgians, if ever called on, would even prove good soldiers.
"But whether the people of a neutral State are ever likely to be brave
and self-sacrificing is another thing." Such a writer certainly does not
shrink--as Burke, we know, once shrank--from framing an indictment
against an entire people. Whether Belgium, as a nation, is
self-sacrificing and brave may safely be left to the judgment of
posterity. There is a passage in one of Mr. Lecky's books--I cannot put
my finger on the exact reference--in which he pronounces that the sins
of France, which are many, are forgiven her, because, like the woman
in the Gospels, she has loved much. It is not our business now, if
indeed at any time, to appraise the sins of Belgium; but surely her love,
in anguish, is manifest and supreme. When we contemplate these
firstfruits of German "kultur"- -this deluge of innocent blood, and this
wreckage of ancient monuments--who can hesitate for a moment to
belaud this little people, which has flung itself thus gallantly, in the
spirit of purest sacrifice, in front of the onward progress of this new and
frightful Juggernaut? Rather one recalls that old persistent creed,
exemplified perhaps in the mysteries, now of the Greek Adonis, now of
Persian Mithras, and now of the Roman priest of the Nennian lake, that
it is only through the gates of sacrifice and death that the world moves
on triumphant to rejuvenation and life. Is it, in truth, through the blood
of a bruised and prostrate Belgium that the purple hyacinth of a rescued
European civilization will spring presently from the soaked and untilled
soil?
Yet even if German "kultur" in the end sweep wholly into ruin the long
accumulated treasures of Belgian architecture, sculpture, and
painting--if Bruges, which to-day stands still intact, shall to- morrow be
reckoned with Dinant and Louvain--yet it would still be worth while to
set before a few more people this record of vanished splendour, that
they may better appreciate what the world has lost through lust of

brutal ambition, and better be on guard in the future to protect what
wreckage is left. All these treasures were bequeathed to us--not to
Belgium alone, but to the whole world--by the diligence and zeal of
antiquity; and we have seen this goodly heritage ground in a moment
into dust beneath the heel of an insolent and degraded militancy.
Belgium, in very truth, in guarding the civilization and inheritance of
other nations, has lavishly wrecked her own. "They made me keeper of
the vineyards; but my own vineyard have I not kept."
Luckily, however, it is not yet quite clear that the "work of waste and
ruin" is wholly irreparable. One sees in the illustrated English papers
pictures of the great thirteenth-century churches at Dixmude, Dinant,
and Louvain, made evidently from photographs, that suggest at least
that it is not impossible still to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. Dixmude,
indeed--I judge from an interior view--is possibly shattered past hope;
but Dinant and St. Pierre, at Louvain, so far at least as their fabrics are
concerned, seem to lack little but the woodwork of their roofs. It is only
a few years ago since the writer stood in the burnt-out shell of Selby
Abbey; yet the Selby Abbey of to-day, though some ancient fittings of
inestimable value have irreparably perished, is in some ways not less
magnificent, and is certainly more complete, than its imperfect
predecessor. One takes comfort, again, in the thought of York Minster
in the conflagration caused by the single madman Martin in 1829, and
of the collapse of the blazing ceilings in nave and chancel, whilst the
great gallery of painted glass, by some odd miracle, escaped. Is it too
much to hope that this devil's work of