Nevertheless, the stupendous fact remains that France, caught in a European war most unaware, with impaired budget and a floating indebtedness, has carried the greatest war of her history for six months without a long-term national loan and by the issue of less than $200,000,000 5 per cent short-term notes for not exceeding one year, and credits for less than $800,000,000 from the Bank of France; has maintained her gold basis unimpaired; and has kept the international exchanges steadily in her favor; and all this without any special financial legislation.

Nor could I find any evidence of a French disposition to sell the American copper shares, railroad bonds, or industrial shares into which the French have been putting some money of late years.  But I did learn that short-term American railroad notes may this year be renewed abroad only in part.

CHAPTER VIII

THE BELGIAN SACRIFICE

No Migration from Belgium—­Germany’s War Tax
Levies—­Irreconcilable—­The Army—­No Neutrality over Belgium.

Before Germany launched her thunderbolts of war, Belgium had an industrious, frugal, hard-working, saving population of nearly 8,000,000 people.  Of these, 450,000 are now refugees in Holland, where the magnanimous Dutch are providing for them with no outside assistance.  Queen Wilhelmina declares, “These are our guests and we will care for them.”  Nearly 30,000 Belgian troops have also been interned in Holland.  It was expected that they might leak out, but the Dutch are stern in their present position of neutrality.  They understand their very existence depends upon it.  Some of the interned warriors attempted to escape, and six were shot by the Dutch.  Nor will they permit contraband articles of war to go through their country.  While the Dutch may sell their own supplies as they please, all imports of rubber, copper, or petroleum must be accounted for, and their reexport to Germany is forbidden.

Germany also holds 30,000 Belgian soldiers as prisoners.  England took 18,000 severely wounded Belgian soldiers into her hospitals, and 80,000 refugees are being there cared for largely by private enterprise.  The losses by the war are difficult of estimation.  But at the present time there are 7,000,000 people in Belgium, most of whom must be fed by the outside world.

Belgium is the one nation from which the people have never migrated.  Beyond war there is only one power that can move the Belgians from their soil, and that is the influence of the Church.

Representatives of American railroad and industrial interests are in Europe endeavoring to induce emigration from Belgium to the United States, but it is doubtful if these efforts will meet with any success.  There are in the United States to-day only two Belgian settlements, one of about 1000 people in Montana and one of about 1500 in western New York.  The Belgian loves his land and sits by his home though it be in ruins.  The history of the land of the Belgians shows that, as the cockpit of Europe, it was the battle-ground of centuries; yet her people are more immobile than those of any other country in Europe.  Earthquakes do not make sunny Italy or golden California less attractive to their inhabitants.