LONG LIVE BELGIUM!

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 57, 5 September 1944, Page 4

LONG LIVE BELGIUM!

•Brussels, and to a great extent Belgium, have been or are being liberated as this is being written, and the liberating Allied armies are in Holland and at Antwerp; Belgium is being released from German chains as five years of Germany's war are completed. During more than four of those five years Belgium and Holland have been, very directly .under Hitler's paw, and their European resistance has been underground; Almost. in a flash their resistance is being transformed—except in areas where Hitler's paw remains— from underground to above-ground, from covert to overt action. General Eisenhower in his appeal to the Belgians tells them: "Your orders now are s to protect and not sabotage factories, mines, and other industrial installations." Those words speak volumes. Until quite recently, the factories, mines, and other industrial installations were weapons in the hands of the German enemy, who stood on the offensive. Today they appear as weapons falling from the failing grasp of an enemy whose defence has been broken—even shattered—and thus they have become overnight potential weapons in the hands of the Allies, as well as Belgian national assets to be protected for the use of a revitalised Belgian nation. For both reasons, the Belgians should, and no doubt will, do their best to protect all these properties from the demolition gangs of a defeated enemy who no longer has any use for anything constructive* in Belgium, and whose mission therefore is to destroy. The European hubs of two far-flung empires are being restored by the efforts of the armies of liberation plus the efforts of the people themselves, Belgian and Dutch. European Belgium and Holland have worked underground, and oversea Belgium and Holland have helped mightily in all branches of the war effort. At a time when French Africa was in the

balance, torn one way by Collaboration and another way by the Free French movement, Belgian Africa was of immense assistance to the Allies, both in the way of human' and of material resources. In appointing Major-General Yvon Gerard as commander of all units of the Belgian Forces of the Interior at. present engaged in combat, and in announcing the appointment of Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands as commander of the Netherlands Forces of the Interior, General Eisenhower said: "Belgians— the hour for which you have been waiting so long has" struck. Your qualities of courage and discipline, which have shown such magnificent results since the landings in Normandy first Began, are now called upon for one last supreme effort." In this effort the Belgians are asked to conduct- their operations against the enemy according to the rules of war; in the case of breaches of those rules by the enemy, to collect evidence against the perpetrators; to obey the orders of Belgian leaders, and to "avoid as far as possible action against superior enemy formations"; and to refuse to "indulge in any unorganised outbursts of violence." Eisenhower asks "the population of unliberated areas not to attempt any mass rising but to give all the help they could to Iheir own forces of resistance." He also appeals to Belgian railwaymen and other transport workers to assist in delaying enemy movements, and in conclusion he sounds the trumpet call, "Long live Belgium!" Dismissing, all German pretensions that Germany was compelled by cir-' cumstances to "hack her way through Belgium" in 1914, Mr.. Churchill wrote in his history: "The only test by which human beings can judge war responsibility is Aggression; and the supreme proof of Aggression is Invasion. . . . Mankind'will be wise in the future to take as the paramount criterion of war guilt the sending of the main armies of any State across its frontier line, and to declare that whoever "does this puts himself irretrievably in the wrong. ;The violation of Luxemburg and Belgium by the German armies marching upon France will stare through' the centuries from the pages of History." And now it stares through "History's pages" twice in one century. Also, twice in one century the Germans have been pushed back through the gate by which they entered. This thought will mingle with victory bells in Brussels and will surely steel the hearts of liberated and liberators to make the new World War Memorial the final one.