What should we have gained by yielding to the German threats? What confidence could we have in the promises of a Government that shamelessly tore up a solemn treaty in order to gain easier access to the country of its foe?
Had the Germans come into Belgium as friends and won the war, they would never have left our land after their victory. If any one is inclined to question this, let him consider the outburst of greed aroused in Germany by the invasion of Belgium. Intellectuals equipped with sham historical claims, manufacturers envious of our industrial successes, traders lusting to capture our markets, join hands to-day with the Socialists (who are no less infatuated than they with the ideal of a Greater Germany) in order to demand our annexation. The Berlin Cabinet would have resolved to break its word once more, and pretexts would not have been wanting—the need of seizing the whole North Sea coast, as a naval base against England; the strategical and commercial importance of Antwerp; perhaps, too, the inevitable wrangles between the Belgian authorities and the German officials who would have presided over the occupation of a part of the country. To what lengths, by the way, would this occupation not have gone? On what nook or corner of our soil should we still have been allowed to plant our national flag?
Perhaps (this is the best we could have hoped for) the Germans would have asked us, in a wheedling tone, yet leaving no room for refusal, to become members of the Germanic Confederation. At first a customs union, a Zollverein, before complete incorporation—the right of admission to the Holy Empire—had been decreed by our future Cæsar, on the advice of the Federal Council and in accordance with the progress of our Germanization. They would not have waited for this glorious day in order to control and regulate the output of our factories and our coal-mines, affiliating the workers to the German trade unions; to organize the activities of Antwerp, without injuring those of the German ports, and to restrict its commercial _hinterland_; to watch over our daily life, prohibit all displays of national feeling, instil German discipline into our army, and make our statesmen and our diplomats their submissive thralls. We should have been at once relieved of the Congo, too heavy a burden for our shoulders. We should have been compelled to learn German as a third language, soon to become the official tongue. Many a time, while reading in our newspapers the wretched controversies caused by the rivalry between our two languages, I have had occasion to say to the young men on my staff: “They don’t seem to realize in Belgium the danger of our seeing German one day become the language of instruction at Ghent university.”