BELGIAN INDEPENDENCE.

Press, Volume LI, Issue 15219, 5 March 1915, Page 9

BELGIAN INDEPENDENCE.

GLADSTONE'S WORDS RECALLED

It is curious, says "Tit Bits/ to read in tho light of events of to-day, what Gladstone said concerning the neutrality of Belgium in 1870, when the British Government demanded from France and Prussia an undertaking that they would respect Belgium's position. Curiously enough, Prussia at onco gave an assurance on this point; but it was only after eomo hesitation that Franco, then ruled by Napoleon HI., also pledged itself to respect tho neutrality of Belgium.

It -vras theso circumstances which gave rise to an important debate in Parliament on August 10th, 1870, when Mr Gladstone said, "What is Belgium? It is a country containing four or five millions of people, with much of an historic', past, and imbued with a sentiment of nationality and a spirit of independence as warm and as genuuio as that which beats in tho hearts of the proudest and most powerful nations. . . . Looking at a country

such as that, is thoro any man who bears nio who does not feel that if, in order to.eatisfy a greedy appetite for aggrandisement, coming whence it may, Belgium wore absorbed, tho day that witnessed that absorption ivould hear the knell of public right and public law in Europe? "But w ® hare an interest in the independence of Belgium which is wider than that. ... It is found in the

answer to fho question, whether, under .the circumstances of the case, this country, endowed as it ia with influence and power, would quietly etand by and -witness the perpetration of the direst crimo that ever stained the pages of history, andtlrus beconio participators in the sin? ,. One might almost fancy it ras Mr Asquith speaking to-day, and it is a curious fact that, ten years after the Franco-Prussian war, Mr Gladstone, speaking again of Belgium in connexion with that war, said:—-"We felt called upon to enlist ourselves on the part of the British nation as advocates and as champions of the integrity and independence of Belgium. And if we ha-d gone to war to should hare gone to war for freedom, wo ehould liavo gone to war for public right, we should hare gone to war to save human happiness from being invaded by tyrannous and lawless power. That is what I call a good cause, gentlemen. And though I detest war. and there are no i-oo strong, if j-ou could supply nio -with themT that T will not endeavour to heap ijpon ite head, in sucji a -war as that, while tho breath in my body is continued to mc, I am ready to ongage."