The credit due to Belgium for having resisted the Germans in 1914 and for having carried on throughout the war, maintaining an army at the front despite all obstacles, was not denied by the Entente Powers, and they believed that they had done her full justice, within the limits of possibility during the Peace Conference and in the subsequent negotiations. Release from war debts, priority of reparations payments, and generous aid in getting back from Germany the loot of the war can be cited as tangible evidences of gratitude and good will. The failure to recognize the equality of Belgium in post-bellum councils rankled, however, and made it easy for politicians to turn the bitter experiences of the Peace Conference to their own benefit. Consequently we have seen in Belgium since the war the evolution of an unhappy foreign policy opposed to the political and economic interests of the country. This policy has jeopardized, almost nullified, the excellent results of the marvelous progress toward rehabilitation accomplished by the entire people in 1919 and 1920.
After the World War all the belligerents sorely needed peace, the small states even more than the great powers, and the countries that had suffered by enemy military occupation most of all. The Belgian Government had lived entirely on credit during an exile of four years. The normal revenues of the country had been appropriated by the enemy. The blockade had disorganized industry. Belgium’s foreign markets had been lost to the United States, Great Britain, and Japan. The carrying and transit trade had become wholly disorganized. The country was flooded with German marks, and was partly looted; 40 per cent of its inhabitants were out of work. The years of German occupation had fostered the Flemish language movement, had increased trade-unionism 300 per cent, had introduced the impersonal element in production on a large scale, and had made the people profoundly unwilling to go back to an almost feudal régime in politics and in many of the leading industries.
If ever a country needed to have a period of non-partisan government at home, freedom from military burdens, and respite from playing the game of world politics, Belgium was that country. Economic interests demanded productive activity on a large scale, unhampered access to world markets, and the revival of the wealth accruing from the transit trade through the port of Antwerp. Partly dependent on the prosperity of Germany, and geographically inhibited from playing either Great Britain or France as a favorite, the sensible policy for Belgium was speedy reconciliation with Germany and the reaffirmation of her old neutrality, appealing her case to the League of Nations and the United States.