a recommendation
which the Minister refused to accept, not to Gibson's surprise.

On that Christmas afternoon and evening, the people promenaded
the streets as usual. You might have thought it a characteristic
Christmas afternoon or evening except for the Landsturm patrols. But
there was an absence of the old gaiety, and they were moving as if
from habit and moving was all there was to do.

They had heard the sound of the guns at Dixmude the night before.
Didn't the sound seem a little nearer? No. The wind from that
direction was stronger. When? When would the Allies come?

X
The Future Of Belgium

In former days the traveller hardly thought of Belgium as possessing
patriotic homogeneity. It was a land of two languages, French and
Flemish. He was puzzled to meet people who looked like well-to-do
mechanics, artisans, or peasants and find that they could not answer
a simple question in French. This explained why a people so close to
France, though they made Brussels a little Paris, would not join the
French family and enter into the spirit and body of that great
civilization on their borders, whose language was that of their own
literature. Belgium seemed to have no character. Its nationality was
the artificial product of European politics; a buffer divided in itself,
which would be neither French, nor German, nor definitely Belgian.

In later times Belgium had prospered enormously. It had developed
the resources of the Congo in a way that had aroused a storm of
criticism. Old King Leopold made the most of his neutral position to
gain advantages which no one of the great Powers might enjoy
because of jealousies. The International Sleeping Car Company was
Belgian and Belgian capitalists secured concessions here and there,
wherever the small tradesman might slip into openings suitable to his
size. Leopold was not above crumbs; he made them profitable; he
liked to make money; and Belgians liked to make money.

Her defence guaranteed by neutrality, Belgium need have no thought
except of thrift. Her ideals were those of prosperity. No ambition of
national expansion stirred her imagination as Germany's was stirred;
there was no fire in her soul as in that of France in apprehension of
the day when she would have to fight for her life against Germany; no
national cause to harden the sinews of patriotism. The immensity of
her urban population contributed its effect in depriving her of the
sterner stuff of which w