V

REPARATION

in

labour which would be required to restore such acountryside seemed incalculable ; and to the returnedtraveller any number of milliards of pounds wasinadequate to express in matter the destructionthus impressed upon his spirit. Some Governmentsfor a variety of intelligible reasons have not beenashamed to exploit these feelings a little.

Popular sentiment is most at fault, I think, inthe case of Belgium. In any event Belgium is asmall country , and in its case the actual area ofdevastation is a small proportion of the whole. Thefirst onrush of the Germans in 1914 did some damagelocally; after that the battle-line in Belgium didnot sway backwards and forwards, as in France ,over a deep belt of country. It was practicallystationary, and hostilities were confined to a smallcorner of the country , much of which in recent timeswas backward, poor, and sleepy, and did not includethe active industry of the country . There remainssome injury in the small flooded area, the deliberatedamage done by the retreating Germans to build-ings, plant, and transport, and the loot of machinery,cattle, and other movable property. But Brussels ,Antwerp, and even Ostend are substantially intact,

seemed designed to express to the traveller the memories of the ground.A visitor to the salient early in November 1918, "when a few Germanbodies still added a touch of realism and human horror, and the greatstruggle was not yet certainly ended, could feel there, as nowhere else,the present outrage of war, and at the same time the tragic and senti-mental purification which to the future will in some degree transform itsharshness.