BELGIUM'S FLAG DAY




IX

BELGIUM'S FLAG DAY


1

To-day our flag will quiver in every French hand as a symbol of love
and gratitude. This day should be a day of hope and glory for all
Belgium.

Let us forget for a moment our terrible distress; let us forget our
plains and meadows, the fairest and most fertile in Europe, now
ravaged to such a degree that the utmost that one can say is powerless
to give any idea of a desolation which seems irremediable. Let us
forget--if to forget them be possible--the women, the children, the
old men, peaceable and innocent, who have been massacred in their
thousands, the tale of whom will amaze the world when once the grim
barrier is broken behind which so many secret horrors are being
committed. Let us forget those who are dying of hunger in our country,
a land without harvests and without homes, a land methodically taxed,
pillaged and crushed until it is drained of the last drop of its
life-blood. Let us forget those remnants of our people who are
scattered hither and thither, who have trodden the path of exile, who
are living on public charity, which, though it show itself full of