creed, rating all men as equal, and only
recognising each man and each woman as one in a mob of similar animals,
will lower the race till even your name will be replaced with a numeral.
It is a creed akin to the German ideal of the man-animal that dragged a
bloody trail across our country.

"I tell you, the creed must fail that cannot recognise any degrees of
mental capacity; that cannot understand that man has a soul that cannot
be confined within any man-drawn boundaries. This German-creed sweeps
the earth with all the bombast of a war-mad Kaiser. It is going to fail,
but not till men who think will rise and fight for recognition of their
immortality. It will be the War of the Ages!

"And in the fight Belgium will stand firm once again as the Buffer State
of Civilisation. It will hold the gate for the future of Humanity."

I came away from that meeting impressed with the air of prophecy in the
discourse, for Belgium was standing firm for Individualism. A lonely
State in a developing world of Socialism, and though Kings in other
lands began to fear the safety of their crowns, Albert of Belgium was
still the beloved sovereign of a prosperous people.

It was strange how Belgium quickly recovered from the war!

The energy generated by that conflict, the confidence engendered by
success, and the adaptability and resourcefulness taught by the war, set
off the loss of many of her manhood.

The war was a forerunner of a vigorous period of expansion of Belgian
industry, for the employment of 800,000 German prisoners on national
works set free the population to develop various enterprises.

Another incentive to excel was the practical sympathy the world had
shown to Belgium in her days of distress. It put such stimulation into
the nation that it felt it had to make good to merit the world's high
regards.

I write at length on this remarkable sequel to the war on the part of
Belgium, as other nations did not rise to the occasion like it did. The
Socialistic doctrines of the Humanist countries sapped at the initiative
of the worker, advanced his wages, but crushed the men of wealth and
forced them to seek new fields for their enterprise.

It is a trait of the human nature that he, desiring to excel, will
eventually rise; so the men of enterprise, the men of initiative, the
men who do things, came to Belgium though many sought wider fields of
enterprise across the seas.

CHAPTER XXVI.

What a Letter from Austral