1937-05-06 — Page 18

THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH, THURSDAY, MAY 8, 1937.

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THURSDAY, MAY 6, 1937.

BELGIUM wants to

R

OOROY, Steenkerke, Neerwinden, Namur, Ramillies, Qudenarde,

Fontenay, Jomappos, Flourus, Quatre Bras; Ligny, Mons, Waterloo,

Charlerol, Ypres, Yser, Passchendaelu.

Those are all great battle names of Europe in the past 300 years.

WHY NOT BRITISH? Add minor battles and you could

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And every one of these battles was fought somewhere in a small patch of territory, nothing like a hundred miles square, In Brabant and Hainault and Flandern.

It lies in a country which during' these three centuries has been the Spanish Netlierlands, the Austrian Netherlands, part of the French Repubile, part of the Napoleonic Empire, part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Now it 19 Belgium.

Someone-I don't know who-- once christened it the Cockpit of Europe.

It has been fought over, again and again, by Spaniards and French, by British and Dutch, by. Prussians and Austrians and Ger- mans generally.

None of these wars has been any direct concern of the Belgians themselves. Their land has been a bone of contention: or it has just

happened to lle in the way, be

tween Louis XIV and William III, for instance, or between Germany and France in 1914.

"The war of 1070 was the only big one in Western Europe for 300 years that did not manage some- how or other to drift into the Netherlands. And that, perhaps,

"

CLOSE the

66

"COCKPIT"

by

W. N. EWER

King Loopold says to tho Big

Powers:

Fight no

moro battlos hera."

only because the Germán victory was so swift and decisive,

All this is "historical back- ground." But it is a background of which Belgians are very con scious. And it goes a long way towards explaining that "Now Belgian nulfey" which has caused such n lot of surprise and Indignation.

It is quite inevitable that to a Belgian Government It Ahould seem just plain common sense to run its policy with the idea of avoiding In the future the use of Delgium as a convenient cockpit by its ble neighbours.

That is why a few years after it became, for the first time in his- tory, an independent State. Bel-

became gium

also A neutral country. with neutrality guaran- teed

Franco by Britain,

And Prussia. That neutrality was observed in 1870, broken in 1914..

T

"O-DAY, in a slightly dif- ferent form, and under a diferent name, she want to revert to that same policy. It does not provide a per- fect guarantee against being made a cockpit: but, as things are to. day, it seems to the Belgians to give the best chance they can see.

Things, you see, have changed since 1910. Then reallation that neutrality had failed was very strong. Pride-played on by flat- tery in Paris-suggested that the status of a Switzerland was un-, worthy of Belgium.

All the tendency was towards a system composed of one-quarter of

the new League of Nations, three- quarters of a perpetuation of the victorious alliance,

It

The Belgian Government almost automatically aligned itself. It not only joined the League. 1020 General Magiinse, Chief of the General Staff, signed secrot mill- tory agreement with Marshal Foch. It was the first of the post- war alliances.

In 1923 Belgian troops marched with the French into the Ruhr. Belginn afcials played a part, if a subordinate one, in the French attempt to set up a Rhineland Republic separate from the Reich,

Now such a policy was all very well so long na France was ail- powerful. in Western Europe; so long as Germany, was, economic- ally. militarily, diplomatically, powerless and .bound to an acquiescence' tempered only by evasion.

E

it VEN 80.

W45 not entirely popular. There were Belgians enough who disliked the idea of entire

French dependence on.

policy. And this dislike

warmod WAS into resentment by, the reckless way in

which Somo French politicians and newspapers of the Right frankly showed that they re- garded Belgium as a political and' military dependency.

Remember-because this is very important and too often for- gotten that Belgium is not a "French" country. The majority" 18 Flemish speaking, and distrust- and ful of French influenco French penetration.

However, the policy of close allanes with France, clothed after 1925 in the decent equilibrium of Locarno, seemed at any rate safe, seemed to involve no particular danger, until last year.

Then four new factors pushed themselves to the very forefront of Belgian consciousness,

Germany had rearmed, and was ' becoming. roughly speaking, a strong as Franco. Confidence in the value of League guarantees had waned as A result of the Locarno Abyssinian experience. had been dencunced. And Franco-

as the foreign product is cheap- THE GRAVES OF FAMOUS MEN

er, it seems certain that the lat-

ter will be used. This does not graves of our illustrious dead would not have it otherwise, for itminster was offered, he was by his!

mortal remains

of

best

derman relations had become do- cidedly strained.

That was enough to sot Belgian pollicians worrying and, wonder- ing. The French General Staff did the rest.

In the Staff talks which fol- towed the crisis of March, 1030, the French made that point of view quite plain to their Belgian col- lengues,

The soldiers did not worry about such diplomatic, niceties as "UA-

ΙΠ provoked

the aggression." event of trouble with Germany the Belgian army would not as the left wing of the French. All facili- ties would be given for the passage of French troops-and Brillah- through Belgium, The British Air Force would be provided with nd- vanced bases in Belgian territory,

A

ND of these arrange

ments 'would be made in peace time: would so Involve the three countries that if trouble came it would be useless to split diplomatic hairs about

un- provoked aggression." They would all be in it anyway from the start. The French General ́Staff had overplayed their hand. King Leopold and his Ministers were thoroughly scared.

The policy now proposed to them was not in any sense collective security. It was not a European policy or a Belgian policy. It was Just in the very narrowest sense--- a French policy. Belgium was to be fited in to the plans of the French Staff without the least considera- tion for Belgian views or interesia, She was to become an auxillary state.

Now in the first place such a policy could not possibly be sold ta the Belgiati people. The Flemings would oppose vehemently. There would be deep misgivings—to put it mildly among the Walloons. Degrello and his Rexists would make enormous capital out of it. Politically, it was impossible,

Internationally, it was a policy of the cockpit. It was to invite French armies to march into Bel- glum, to provoke German armies to invade Belgium, to offer the un- happy country as an arena in which, if "it" should come, the Western Powers would again fight their battles, Rocroy, Steenkerke, Neerwinden and the rest.”

K

·ING: LEOPOLD and his Ministers recolled. They were being pressed to follow a purely. French policy. If self-interest was to be the order of the day, then Belgium, too, would follow a policy of self-in- terest. And Belgium's interest was since she herself was not likely to be drawn into a quarrel-to keep out of Big Power quarrels.

Spaak, the Socialist Foreign Minister, startled the diplomatic world last July by a speech in which he declared that Belgium would only night in defence of Bel- glan territory. It was a declaration of noutrality-still more a declara- tion of independence.

Leopold's speech in October, all the diplomatic moves aince, have Just dotted the "l's” and crossed the "t's" of Spaak's speech.

Belgium's new line is clear, Bho intends, while the present situa-, tion lasts, to try to keep clear, Bho will commit herself to none of her neighbours. She will try to keep friends with them all,

If they choose to quarrel she wil try to keep out. If they

tọ

guarding her own frontiers. Diplo matically and militarlly, she will haya one objective:" to endeavour never to be again as so often in the `past, the cockpit of Europe.

are indeed scattered far and is in keeping with the life of him own request laid beside his father

whose whole existence was:→→→

and mother. The plain, broad tomb- wide." Restricting this brief survey of course, imply that the cement to men of letters, we instinctively

"lived in pleasant thought, stone bears the names of himself and As if life's business were a his brother John, surmounted by the in the first instance to West- will be below the standard re-tanter Abbey, our national Valhalla, summer mood."

family crest-two wyverns and the A few miles distant, under the motto "Humilitate." are and thero in the Poets' Corner we quired, but, unless there

A high fron railing surrounds the find ourselves literally walking over shadow of Crosthwaite Church, is to

family burial ground, giving it an air overwhelming considerations to the graves of men whose names are be found the grave of Southey, an

the other poet of Lakeland, 4 more of aloofness and austerity, which is Here the the contrary, it does seem that household or Samuel Johnson, imposing stone marks his last resting- characteristic of the principal Bgure in contracts of this kind a pre-Dickens, Tennyson, Browning, and place, and a well-worn path which whose remains rest therein; yet one ference should to be shown for many others, and as we gaze on the leads to it shows that his memory is constrained to turn back and look

Is still revered.

again upon a name which conjures the British commodity. There familiar names graven on the pave-

ment

It might have been more fitting had up passages of haunting prose which underfool, we feel as if we

many a wayfarer "a is one factor which strengthens were on sacred ground and step Coleridge also been laid to rest in have been to

Lakeland, with its many literary kin

kind of roadmelody" or marching this contention, namely, that the reverently aside.

Shakespeare, the greatest of them associations, and where some of his music of mankind."

work was produced, instead of Had Robert Burns been laid to rest disparity in price between Hong- all, rests in front of the altor of the la Highgate Cemetery, on

the in

simple grave by Alloway Kirk kong-produced and foreign old church at Stratford-on-Avon, the northern fringe of London, but this or in the old town of Ayr, it would PHONE cement is partially

Bttle town where he was born. As was not to be. Still, it affords some have been more acceptable to his due to we view the worn slab that covers satisfaction to know that be sleeps at admirers than in a costly mausoleum 28028"dumping."

Japanese coment, his bones and the bust that looks for instance, is sold in Japan at down upon it, we and it dificult to rescat Catance from his dearest in the town of Dumfries, where the fight she will try to stay house to

friend, Charles Lamb, whose re- grim tragedy of his closing days was realise that here lies the great mains are interred in the churchyard enacted. one yen per 100 lbs., but in dramatist to whom the whole civiilsed

at Edmonton.

Dumfries has thus gained a fame world pays homage, and that more Hongkong it can be procured than three centuries have elapsed Swinburne rests in the beautiful it scarcely deserves, for its in- churchyard of St. Boniface, Isle of habitants were slow in dwaling to at from $1.40 to $1.50 per since his eyes closed upon the mortal Wight. A narrow, recumbent nione the fact that they had been con-

scene. The church is ringed with 250 lbs. Haiphong cement comes cims; the placid river flows softly by covers the grave, and as there are sorting with one of the Immortals. similar stones on either side, one Posterity has tried to make amends; into the Colony even cheaper and in the ancient churchyard you might pass the spot without know but the pilgrim to the shrine of still, being in competition with my (if you are so mind) restoring that the poet is buried there, Burns will ever find himself ex-

a space on the seat where Longfellow !

The plty of it- the the Japanese product. A case sat while he composed those lines were it not for a narrow strip of claiming.

wood bearing his name which calls pity of it!" could, admittedly, be made out entitled To the Avon":

"Flow on, fair stream! His dream attention to the fact.

In Far Samoa for use of foreign products by is o'er;

Carlyle's Friend:

And what of those whose "resting private firms when competing

In na obscure corner of the ad- graves" are under allen skies-for for contracts ong with another,

joining churchyard of Bonchurch the from the land of their birth? grave of John Sterling, Carlyle's this connection we immediately think always provided the quality is

great friend and admirer, may bo of Shellery and. Keats, whose aakes found by those who care to seek it. lle in the Eternal City, and of many not in dispute, and in which

An unpretentious stone marks the others one might name. But there adoption of the principle of buy

last resting place of him whom the is one "exile whose name has a ing in the cheapest market

sage described as "that radiant child stronger appeal to all true Scots than might mean the difference be identical with those which press letter to

shame a letter to Carlyle was to be for over any of those, and as we think of it, mountain top in a far Pacific Isle tween gaining and losing a con- close upon it on either side, yet one memorable," as, indeed, it is over there rises before us the vision of a Coming nearer home, our steps on which there is a lonely grave over tract. But the same considera-

naturally gravitate toward Dryburgh which the breezes of the southern tion scarcely applies to a British very considerable orders for its Abbey, under whose broken arches seas will sigh for overmore; and as the mortal remains of Sir Waller wo think of AR. L. 8.”. we seem to Government Department, even product from this quarter. The Scott

reposo, with the rippling hear though taxpayers money is in same principle ought surely to waters of his beloved Tweed mur

This is volved. It is pertinent in this apply here in Hongkong in re- murely the perfect setting for the

muring a quiet requiem. connection to note that in the spect of all Government con- tomb of him whose magle pen threw afresh glamour over the romantic big naval and military works at tracts. If a Government De- Borderland, and whose name will be Sanitary, Heating & Ventilating Dept.

Singapore, the use of British partment does not do all in its for ever associated with the scenes

he so eloquently portrayed. NIGHT, WEEK-END No. 28028 cement has been stipulated, with power to foster and encourage

Thomni Carlyle's last resting-plage

. Fordyce Clark the result that the Green Island British industry, who else is is in the old churchyard at Ecclefe not the inscribed column in their The name of the mountain: in chan, near the house where he was own land which is the record of their Samon on whose summit “R. L. 8.” Comont Company has secured likely to do so?

born. Although a grave-in West- virtues, but the unwrliten memory was laid to rest.

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He stands upon another shore; A vaster river ncår him flows, And still he follows where it goes." Lakeland Shrines

Wordsworth's grave at Grasmere has little to distinguish it from those surrounding it. The simple tomb

stone which bears

15.

L

For Vaca call to Allermuir Across wide leagues of foam "I proudly guard his sacred dust, And bold it lovingly in trust For you, his Hills of Home.”.

But

In

- after all, it matters Hillo where

N Paris, in Moscow, there is a tendency, to scold and to be indignant. That is futile. It will confirm the Belgians in their suspicions and their resolution.

it is to be read elsewhere than in For Big Fowers the lesson-and

Brussola is that small Powers are weary of the role of auxiliary, of catapaw, if you will: that'

they want to play Power politics they will have to play. It by themselves and run its risks alone."

And for all of us; that if you want to build a system of collec- tive security, it must be honestly designed, and that the advantages It offers to those joining in it must outweigh the risks, ele

To-day's Thought INWARD Berenity becomes.

outward strength, the

-W. T. MURRAY.

the mortal remains of our great ones of them in the hearts and minds of are laid. "For of illustrious men all all mankind. "the the earth is the sepulchre, and it is