BELGIUM TO-DAY.

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 111, 10 May 1919, Page 17

BELGIUM TO-DAY.

A SCENE OF DESOLATION. WHY HELP IS WANTED WITHOUT DELAY. [Note —The cable news of April 24 contained the following message from Paris:— "Poor Belgium cannot threaten the Peace Conference as Italy can. Headed by her Kins., she merely pleads." M. Vandervelde, one of the Belgian delegates said:—"Belgium has 2,500,uu0 people receiving State assistance, and 750,000 unetnplovod. it ls impossible to restart Industry without machinery and raw material. YVe cannot buy this. Y\e have no credit. Duly the mines nre working. The Belgians plead for the Immediate establishment of a credit by a guarantee that Belgium will get the ilrst £400.000.000 from Germany's indeninltv." King Albert saw all the Conference leaders and pressed for £100,000,00(1 now. M Vandervelde seriously fears Bolshevism in Belglum.J

A soldier returning from tho occupied parts of Belgium wonders why on earth English people find so much to grumble about, writes "An Infantryman" in the

"Pall Mall Gazette" at the end of February. At lirst he tries joking,- then expostulation; finally gets sat on. and subsides into silence. It is rather necessary that ilicse injured folk should try to realise a little how much better oil they are than less fortunate nations.

Belgium in these days is not a gay place. Its spirit has been broken by four long years of damnable oppression;, a calculated vicious oppression, meant to destroy the very life of the people. The whole country has been robbed by the most ruthless thieves in history: not, perhaps, so ut icily and barbarously as 'Northern France, but wi»th a completeness of detail which loaves one gasping. And every railway and track has been completely destroyed with explosives, so that a railway in Kelgium is now a line of craters and twisted rails.

"Civilisation is transportation," says Kipling; and by destroying its railways the Boche has paralysed the very life of ' Belgian civilisation. No wonder these people, courageous as they are, go abuitl with lowered heads. What can the ' Allies do for them when only that one I tottering line to the German frontier! really functions, nnd primitive rond transport is all that remains': You cannot repair thousands of miles of wrecked railways in ten minutes. And it is all very well to say. nobly. "We will look after Belgium." You casi't, with Ghent and Totirnai nearly as far from London as Moscow in peace tithe. A FEW BJtICES. The direct result iof this interrupted communication is,--'an enormous rise in prices. In Tournai, for exiunple, the cost of most ar/tieles would make ihe British housekeeper quail- Leaving aside such thirjgs as packets of sulphur matches at 1- franc 25 cents as something fairly normal, the Briton may ask himself how/ he would like to pay 2 francs apie/ce for ordinary candles when there is hittle gas, a scanty and capricious supply of electric light, ami no oil.! Soap mr tiny tablets cost 85 cents (thisj ■was a deduction); sma.l cakes, a mouth-: ful eaieh. were 75 cents; coffee, made probably .J roasted acorns, S francs the j k"'k>; an ordinary writing pad 5 to 8 franc The list might be extended in-j definite.; except that half the things here considered essential arc missing. Belgium, for pretty well a month, has bejen under snow and frost. It is not lleasant to reflect that for fuel the people have practically only coal dust, a tittle coke, and damp wood. The fac/tories cannot function, because the Boche /destroyed the machinery; the sanitary ' arrangements have gone wrong, with the result that the streets are iil'ed with piles of rubbish: and the cafe life, so dear to Continentals, is a shadow of itself, for there is nothing to drink hut infamous beer and poisonous yin ordinaire at 7 francs the bottle (all good wine was "requisitioned" by the gentlemen from Prussia).

In the villages things are as had. For! fuel, that urgent necessity, they have all lea-st hedges and woods: but fre~h meati is practically unobtainable, even horse! being acquired by the towns. Meat in the villages is practically all tinned, transport. Just after the armistice, the Belgian fields and pastures were al desolate sight. There was not a horse,! not a cow, not a sheep to be seen;] scarcely even an agricultural instrument.! Everything bad been taken. Now, with some British horses and other stock, wrested from tbe close-fisted Boche thieves, a little life has come back to the rountryaide, only to be arretted by tlie bitter frost! NOTES FOR GRCMBLERS. At one village in December a British officer gave some white bread and cheese and a packet of chocolate to a. little boy of five. His mother -aid it was the first time in his iile that tlie di'ld had ta.-trd these things! He called tiie bread "gateau," because he had been told that cake was like bread, but much better. These people were excellent, hardworking, small farmers, quite well-to-do before the war. During the war every ounce of their produce had to be ;akcn to the Boche Kommandantur under menace of fines and imprisonment. ( <mstant interruptions of military police, waving revolvers, had to be endured, and countless petty tyrannies. One woman was fined for giving a chid an apple—the Kommandantur wan toil it! To give a crust or a smoke to a British prisoner meant instant imprisonment.

People in England, living as they do. have the impertinence—there is no oilier •word for it —to grumble ami go on strike over their conditions. It seems—after one has seen the quiet philosophy of these despoiled Belgians—gross and vulgar ingratitude lor safety and prosperity retained. Do they ever think, these "grousers." how they would have fared with the Boche in England! If ell would have been a jazz in comparison.

And —crowning impertinence—we who have, worked helplessly on at. this unmerited suffering, much of which is going ou at this very moment, are asked hy stay-at-homo malcontents to feel tragic and sympathetic because the Bodies are supposed to be starving. Let them starve, as our Allies, and their victims, had to starve. It may let a little humanity into them.