Conditions of life in the Belgian cities were almost
intolerable. The great Belgian Relief Commission, under the direction of
Mr. Hoover, had kept the people from starvation, but it could not secure
them their rights. They lived in the midst of brutality and injustice.
On Belgian Independence Day at London, Arthur J. Balfour, the British
Foreign Minister, made an address in which he commented upon the German
treatment of Belgium. In the course of his address he said: "Bitter must
be the thought in every Belgian heart of what Belgians in Belgium are
now suffering. Let them however, take courage. Let their spirits rise in
a mood of profound cheerfulness, for these dark days are not going to
last forever, and when they come to a conclusion, when again peace dawns
upon this much tormented and cruelly tried world, when Belgium is again
free and prosperous, then Belgians, whether they have spent these
unhappy years in exile, or, an even harder fate, have spent them in
their own country, they will be able to look back upon this time of
cruel and unexampled trial, and they will say to themselves, to their
children and to their descendants, that Belgium, though her existence as
a political entity is less than a century, has within that period shown
an example of courage, constancy and virtue to mankind for which all the
world should be grateful.
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