lness or egotism of the
Supreme Council. "The little that has leaked out of the decisions taken
regarding the conditions which affect Belgium," wrote one journal, "has
caused not only bitter disappointment in Belgium, but also indignation
everywhere.... The Allies having decided not to accord moral
satisfaction to Belgium (they chose Geneva as the capital of the League
of Nations), it was perhaps to be expected that they would not accord
her material satisfaction. And such expectations are being fulfilled.
The Limburg province, annexed to Holland in 1839, the province which
gave the retreating enemy unlawful refuge in 1918, a rank violation of
Dutch neutrality, is apparently not to be restored to Belgium. Even the
right, vital to the safety and welfare of Belgium, the right of
unimpeded navigation of the Scheldt between Antwerp and the sea, has not
yet been conceded. And the raw material that is indispensable if Belgian
industry is to be revived is withheld; the Allies, however, are quite
willing to flood the country with manufactured articles."[135]

And yet Belgium's demands were extremely modest.[136] They were
formulated, not as the guerdon for her heroic defense of civilization,
but as a plain corollary flowing direct from each and every principle
officially recognized by the heads of the Conference--right,
nationality, legitimate guarantees, and economic requirements. Tested by
any or all of these accepted touchstones, everything asked for was
reasonable and fair in itself, and seemingly indispensable to the
durability of the new world-structure which the statesmen were
endeavoring to raise on the ruins of the old. Belgium's forlorn
political and territorial plight embodied all the worst vices of the old
balance of power stigmatized by President Wilson: the mutilation of the
country; the forcible separation of sections of its population from each
other; the distribution of these lopped, ethnic fragments among alien
states and dynasties; the control of her waterways handed over to
commercial rivals; the transformation of cities and districts that were
obviously destined to figure among her sources of national well-being
and centers of culture into dead towns that paralyze her effort and
hinder her progress. In a word, Belgium had had no political existence
for her own behoof. She was not an organic unit in the sodality of
nations, but a mere cog in the mechanism of European equilibrium.

Ruined by the war, Belgium