The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER TUESDAY, AUGUST 25, 1914. THE COCKPIT OF EUROPE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXX, Issue 6, 25 August 1914, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER TUESDAY, AUGUST 25, 1914. THE COCKPIT OF EUROPE.

Belgium, variously known at different stages of her career as Flanders or the Netherlands, has always been “the cockpit of Europe.” Amid its fertile plains and pretty farm-houses, drowsing in summer or autumn warmth for hundreds of years Europe’s decisive battles have been fought on Belgian soil. And now to-day half a million troops of the Allied armies are facing a German host of equal strength in a struggle for the life and freedom of quite half the world. Namur, where the armies are gathered, is historical, and how often have its walls been battered by besieging armies; how often have its defenders gallantly resisted the furious onslaughts; how often been compelled to yield? When it was part of the Spanish Netherlands, it was taken by the French in U 392. Three years later it was again captured, this time by the combined English and French forces. Namur is about halfway between Ramillies and Malplaquet; it is comparatively close to Quatre Bras, and a little further from Waterloo. Discussing Belgium’s uphappy position, a writer in the Auckland “Star” reminds us that at the beginning of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the battles of Europe were fought in Belgium. “Now, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the same Dance of Death is still going on, and probably it will be the same a hundred years hence. For nature has formed the Low Countries into the obvious battle-ground of Europe,” is the conclusion he reaches.