Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 154, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 July 1918 — WHERE BELGIUM STANDS [ARTICLE]

WHERE BELGIUM STANDS

By HON. E. DE CARTIER, Minister of Belgium. His exceUency, E. de Cartier, Belgian minister to the United States, has sent the Vigilantes the following expression of the attitude of his countryl , The principles which you have always stood for, and for which you are again fighting, are the principles which have always animated my little country and for which we, too, are fighting, shoulder to shoulder, with your own brave boys. We are fighting for freedom and Independence. Your soldiers will not come back until it is all over, over there; neither will ours lay down their arms until the world is made safe for honest people. Germany offered us a shameful bargain. She offered to spare our country and to indemnify us, if we would let her pass through to accomplish her crime against our neighbor and her neighbor, France. She wished to make us an accomplice in her crime, and she gave us twelve hours in which to make up our minds. That was eleven hours and fifty-nine minutes too much. We spurned her base offer. We have suffered, but we have no regrets. Having tried in vain to bribe us by offers of immunity, the Germans resorted to violence and intimidation. You all know the story, although many of the details cannot be told until our witnesses are freed from the menacing claw of the German eagle. I say to you that whoever undertakes to write the history of the horrors com,mitted by the Huns of the twentieth century will have a task that will turn his soul sick. One of the greatest of the crimes of Germany was to attempt to enslave our workmen and to force them to work for our enemy and against their own brothers. .Tens of thousands of honest workmen were torn from their wives and families, loaded on trucks like cattle and deported to Germany. There they were tempted by offers of high wages to work for our enemy and to sign a so-called “voluntary contract” to engage in such work —but they would not sign. They were subjected to starvation—but they would not sign. They were tortured but they would not sign. ' The Germans tried to divide our honse against itself —but they “Imagined a vain thing.” In the early part of the war, after having ravaged and massacred in Flanders as well as in the Walloon district, after finding that our people could not be intimidated, the Germans sought to separate Flanders from the rest of Belgium by flattering the Flemings and pretending to be their special protectors. But the only result of the effort to divide Flanders from the rest of our country has been to arouse the most Intense unity throughout the land. All our people immediately rallied in defense of the unity of our country, whose motto is like your own. You have the motto “E Pluribus Unum”—“One Composed of Many,” and ours is “Union Fait la Force”—“ln Union There Is Strength.”