To the Belgians we are the Arch-imp and the Tenant of the Pool of Hell!  We would remain so, even if every stone in Louvain and in Malines were replaced by its equivalent in gold.  That rage can be overcome only after the race, praised by Schiller’s fiery breath, sees its neighbors close at hand and draws advantage from intimate relations with them.  Antwerp not pitted against, but working with, Hamburg and Bremen; Liege, side by side with Essen’s, Berlin’s, and Swabia’s gun factories—­Cockerill in combination with Krupp; iron, coal, woven stuff from old Germany and Belgium, introduced into the markets of the world by one and the same commercial spirit; our Kamerun and their Congo—­such a warm blaze of advantage has burned away many a hatred.  The wise man wins as his friend the deadly foe whose skull he cannot split, and he will rather rule and allow to feast on exceptional dainties this still cold and shy new friend than lose potential well-wishers of incalculable future good-will.

Only, never again a withered Reichsland! (imperial territory.) From Calais to Antwerp, Flanders, Limburg, Brabant, to behind the line of the Meuse forts, Prussian! (German Princes no longer haggle, German tribes no longer envy one another;) the Southern triangle with Alsace and Lorraine—­and Luxemburg, too, if it desires—­is to be an independent federated State, intrusted to a Catholic noble house.  Then Germany would know for what it shed its blood.

We need land for our industries, a road into the ocean, an undivided colony, the assurance of a supply of raw materials and the most fertile well-spring of prosperity—­a people industrious and efficient in its work.

Here they are:  Ore and copper, glass and sugar, flax and wool.  But here, too, there once lived Jan and Hubert van Eyck, Rubens, the reveler Ruysbroek, and Jordeans of the avid eyes.  Here there always lived—­to be sure,-in twilight—­Germania’s little soul, fluttering imagination.

And is there not here, too, that which—­all too stormily and, as a rule, in all too harsh a tone of abuse—­every German heart yearns for, a victory over England?  On the seas such victory cannot be quickly won, indeed; can, indeed, never be won without great sacrifice.  But with the German Empire, whose mortars loom threatening from one coast of the Channel, whose flag floats over the two greatest harbors of Europe and over the Congo basin—­England would have to come into a friendly agreement as a power of equal strength, entitled to equal rights.  If it is unwilling to do so?  Lion, leap!  On our young soil we await thee!  The day of adventure wanes.  But for the German who dares unafraid to desire things the harvest labor of heroic warriors has quickly filled the store-house.

LOUVAIN’S NEW STREETS

[By The Associated Press.]

LONDON, March 9.—­The decision of the municipal authorities of Louvain, Belgium, to give American names to certain streets of the city is set forth in a formal resolution of thanks which was adopted on Washington’s Birthday by the Burgomaster and Aldermen of Louvain and sent to the American Commission for Relief in Belgium.  The resolution concludes as follows: