Decree has followed decree with steady insistence. The courts, even in Brussels, which is mainly a French-speaking city, must hold their sessions in Flemish; official correspondence north of the imaginary line must be in Flemish; the Official Bulletin of German Laws and Decrees in Occupied Belgium is printed in German and Flemish for one part of the country and in German and French for the other. On August 9, 1917, von Falkenhausen issued an edict declaring that in the Flemish administrative region "Flemish must be the exclusive official language of all the authorities and all the functionaries of the state, the provinces, and the communes, as well as their establishments, including educational institutions and the teachers therein." On October 6 the communes in the Province of Brabant were ordered immediately to organize courses in Flemish for the instruction of their employees who did not know that language.
The invaders have tried to create a Belgian faction in support of their policy, and have here and there, at different times, organized meetings and processions of so-called "Activists," or pro-German Belgians. But these assemblages have never been other than contemptible in size and composition. They have been hissed and mobbed by vast crowds of patriotic Belgians, and in Belgium it takes courage to attack a movement which is protected by German bayonets. On February 9, 1918, the Chief Justice and two Associate Judges of the Belgian Court of Appeals at Brussels were arrested for instituting proceedings against the "Activists," and were ordered to be deported to Germany.
With all their cunning the Germans in Belgium have shown themselves densely stupid. Their near-sighted pedantry inclines them to put their trust in formulas, when the thing they are dealing with is life. They think they can _decree_ an indomitable people into submission. Having begun with butchery, they declined into robbery, and now they imagine that because bribery is less rude, it will be regarded as a sort of mercy. Jealous and quarrelsome at home, fussy and petty in their own local and domestic affairs, they cannot understand magnanimity in others. German writers have often admitted and lamented the tendency of the German people to be parochial (_kleinstädtisch_) in their outlook, and stencilled (_schablonenhaft_) in their personality. So they are; and these bad qualities render them incapable of understanding the spirit of Belgium, which is independent, individual, far-sighted, and bold. Since July, 1914, the German heel has stamped its imprint on regions several times as extensive as the German Empire itself. But a nation of pedants will never rule the world, and the echo of those iron-bound, blood-spattered boots will cease to ring when the American people realize that what the Germans have done in Belgium they will try to do wherever they find room to tramp.