“Sire—­I have learned this evening the sentence which your majesty has been pleased to pronounce upon me.  Although I have never had a thought, and believe myself never to have done a deed, which would tend to the prejudice of your service, or to the detriment of true religion, nevertheless I take patience to bear that which it has pleased the good God to permit.  Therefore, I pray your majesty to have compassion on my poor wife, my children and my servants, having regard to my past service.  In which hope I now commend myself to the mercy of God.  From Brussels, ready to die, this 5th of June, 1568.

“LAMORAL D’ EGMONT.”

Thus died a man who did as much probably for Holland as John Eliot for England, or Lafayette for France, or Samuel Adams for this young republic.

THE WOE OF BELGIUM

And now out of all this glorious past comes the woe of Belgium.  Desolation has come like the whirlwind, and destruction like a tornado.  But ninety days ago and Belgium was a hive of industry, and in the fields were heard the harvest songs.  Suddenly, Germany struck Belgium.  The whole world has but one voice, “Belgium has innocent hands.”  She was led like a lamb to the slaughter.  When the lover of Germany is asked to explain Germany’s breaking of her solemn treaty upon the neutrality of Belgium, the German stands dumb and speechless.  Merchants honor their written obligations.  True citizens consider their word as good as their bond; Germany gave treaty, and in the presence of God and the civilized world, entered into a solemn covenant with Belgium.  To the end of time, the German must expect this taunt, “as worthless as a German treaty.”  Scarcely less black the two or three known examples of cruelty wrought upon nonresisting Belgians.  In Brooklyn lives a Belgian woman.  She planned to return home in late July to visit a father who had suffered paralysis, an aged mother and a sister who nursed both.  When the Germans decided to burn that village in Eastern Belgium, they did not wish to burn alive this old and helpless man, so they bayonetted to death the old man and woman, and the daughter that nursed them.

Let us judge not, that we be not judged.  This is the one example of atrocity that you and I might be able personally to prove.  But every loyal German in the country can make answer:  “These soldiers were drunk with wine and blood.  Such an atrocity misrepresents Germany and her soldiers.  The breaking of Germany’s treaty with Belgium represents the dishonor of a military ring, and not the perfidy of 68,000,000 of people.  We ask that judgment be postponed until all the facts are in.”  But, meanwhile, the man who loves his fellows, at midnight in his dreams walks across the fields of broken Belgium.  All through the night air there comes the sob of Rachel, weeping for her children, because they are not.  In moods of bitterness, of doubt and despair the heart