CONTENTS PAGE PHYSICAL AND POLITICAL FEATURES ... 5 HISTORICAL SKETCH 22 THE TOWNS , . .36 THE COUNTRY .63 INDUSTRIES AND MANUFACTURES . . . .70 THE ARTS ..... .75 MUSIC AND DRAMA ... . . .84 LITERATURE .... . . . . 85 APPENDIX THE CONGO . . .. - .90 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....... 94 INDEX 2006693 95 BELGIUM PHYSICAL AND POLITICAL FEATURES BELGIUM has been aptly described as an area of both political and geographic transition. Politically, it is a buffer state, between two great political antagonists, France and Germany, with a third potential antagonist, Holland, stretched far across its northern boundary. Geographically, it is also transitional, since its great rivers, the chief factors of its geographic importance, all rise and empty themselves beyond the Belgian frontiers. Its mineral beds, moreover, are mainly extensions from other countries, and even its surface features are hardly its own any more than its history and languages can be dissociatedfrom France and Holland, Prussia, Austria and Spain. The very railway tickets are transitional, being printed in two languages, one of which is always foreign French for the west, and German for the east. Just as the history of Belgium is largely that of the neighbouring states, so her frontier hnes take on a special significance in connection with that history. Belgium is bounded by France on the south, by Prussia and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg on the east and south-east, by Holland on the north and north-east, and by the North Sea on the northwest. Her land frontiers measure 384 miles with France, 80 miles with Luxembourg, 60 miles with Prussia, 269 miles with Holland, and she has a coast line of 42 miles. The measure of the respective frontiers is largely that of the political and military struggles waged along them. Certainly the Franco-Belgian frontier, with its vast superiority in length, takes precedence as the line of longest contention. The endless wars between France and Spain were almost invariably settled by the acquisition or the cession of some treasured piece of territory adjoining this frontier. In the same way the eastern and northern frontiers have their pungent historical associations. It was in the quarries of the Maestricht district that many heretical refugees from Spanish Jesuitism sought refuge, while the long Dutch frontier is more significant still, in that it recalls the determined effort of Holland to restrict the sea-oast of her neighbours to a comparatively short strip, and, above all, to retain control of the mouth of the Scheldt, the most valuable tidal outlet to the North Sea. The open sea-coast is mainly associated with the decay of two of Belgiums most noble cities, Bruges and Ypres, and the rise, at an interval of time, of two new ports the old Nieuport and the new Zeebrugge at the outlets of the Yser and the Bruges ship canal. The sea-coast itself is a long, narrow strip of very gently shelving sands and sand-dunes. The shallowness of the water is some security against invasion but this fringe to the stretch of inland plains, which it protects partly by the natural dunes and partly by artificial dykes, has few other claims to attractiveness, and is, moreover, swept and scoured by every wind that blows. Flat meadowland forms the littoral plains, which in part are below sea-level. Thence the land tends to rise very gradually towards the Ardennes, where it attains a maximum height of 2300 feet. Between this upland plateau and the middle region comprising Brabant and Hainaut lies the coal- and iron-bearing valley of the Sambre-Meuse. One can only generalise roughly the character of these various divisions. The low-lying plains of Flanders are largely pasturage... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.