ertake it; they could not do
otherwise. They were attacked by the born enemy, the irreducible and
absolute enemy, of whom they knew enough to understand that they had
nothing to expect from him but total and unremitting disaster. It was
a question of their continued existence in this world. They had no
choice; they had to defend themselves; and any other nation in their
place would have done the same, only there are few who would have done
it with the same spirit of self-abnegation, the same devotion, the
same perseverance, the same loyalty and the same smiling courage.

2

But for us Belgians--and we may say as much for you English--it was
not a question of this kind of duty. The horrible drama did not
concern us. It demanded only the right to pass us by without touching
us; and, far from doing us any harm, it would have flooded us with the
unclaimed riches which armies on the march drag in their wake. We
Belgians in particular, peaceable, hospitable, inoffensive and almost
unarmed, should, by the very treaties which assured our existence,
have remained complete strangers to this war. To be sure, we loved
France, because we knew her as well as we knew ourselves and because
she makes herself beloved by all who know her. But we entertained no
hatred of Germany. It is true that, in spite of the virtues which we
believed her to possess but which were merely the mask of a spy, our
hearts barely responded to her obsequiously treacherous advances. For
the German, of all the inhabitants of our planet, has this one and
singular peculiarity, that he arouses in us, from the onset, a
profound, instinctive, intuitive feeling of antipathy. But, even so
and wherever our preferences may have lain, our treaties, our pledged
word, the very reason of our existence, all forbade us to take part in
the conflict. Then came the incredible ultimatum, the monstrous demand
of which you know, which gave us twelve hours to choose between ruin
and death or dishonour. As you also know, we did not need twelve hours
to make our choice. This choice was no more than a cry of indignation
and resolution, spontaneous, fierce and irresistible. We did not stay
for a moment to ponder the extenuating circumstances which our
weakness might have invoked. We did not for a moment consider the
absolution which history would have granted us later, on realizing
that a conflict between forces so completely disproportioned was
futile, that we must inevitably be cru