Belgium Hero and Martyr, 1914-1915

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. As I said and as history will lay it down some day, with more eloquence and authority than I have done, they have actually saved the Latin civilisation. For centuries they stood at the conflu ence of two powerful and hostile cultures. They had to choose between them and did not hesitate. And their choice is all the more significant and fraught with meaning because none could choose with fuller knowledge. No doubt you know that half Belgium is of German stock. She could therefore, owing to her affinity of race, understand better than another the culture offered to her with its inclusive theory of dishonour. She understood it so well, knew it so well, that she flung it from her with horror, with a passionate violence, unequalled, spontaneous, unanimous and irresistible from which there is no appeal, giving to the world a stern, peremptory lesson sealed with every drop Of her blood.