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BRAVE BELGIANS

From the French of

BARON C. BUFFIN

by
Alys Hallard

Preface by
Baron de Broqueville
Belgian Minister of War

Awarded the Audiffred Prize by the French Academy of
Moral and Political Science






G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
1918

Copyright, 1918
by
G. P. Putnam's Sons


The Knickerbocker Press, New York




Foreword


 St. Pierrebrouck.
 January 15, 1916.

 My dear Friend:

I am glad to hear that you have now completed the work you undertook of
collecting, from our soldiers themselves, these accounts of the war.
They will certainly help people to know, and to appreciate, what you so
rightly call our heroic and valiant Belgium.

You could not have employed your talent and activity in a better way.
As it is not yet possible to write the History of the tragic days
we are living, it is highly necessary to collect the most striking
episodes, and to prevent the loss of testimony to which posterity can
appeal when it wishes to judge the men and things of our times. The
accounts that you have collected so patiently help us to live over
again the whole campaign, from the startling revelation which the
glorious days of Liege were for many of us, down to the hard moments
through which our army is passing in its victorious defence of the Yser.

"The determined resistance," our King called it in his memorable speech
to Parliament. How we see this determined resistance in the magnificent
enthusiasm of our soldiers, arresting, around the Liege forts, the
first wave of invaders, without troubling about the human torrent
rolling onwards towards them from the whole of Germany! How we see it,
too, in the tragic episodes of the invasion, in the bold adventures of
our volunteers, in those glorious deaths of which your book reminds us,
deaths of which we cannot think without a pang at our hearts!

Your accounts prove to us how the unanimous will of the nation
galvanised the army and how the example of our chiefs, from the King
down to the merest sub-lieutenant, encouraged and brought about the
most noble self-sacrifices. These accounts prove to us, thanks to many
details of episodes lived through during these eighteen months of war,
what a quantity of virtues our magnificent little army, brave and
studious as it is, held in reserve for the hour of danger.

Well-known figures and deeply regretted friends are evoked in these
pages by their sorrowful comrades. These rapid sketches, written in
campaign diaries by those who shared the same dangers and sacrificed
everything to the same cause, have a special value. The modesty of the
man who tells the story is still another homage rendered to the whole
Corps, and it is to the Army, to the traditional, disciplined, national
force, that our admiration goes out, when we read of the fine deeds
described in this book.

On reading it, the country will better understand the affection and
respect it owes to the soldier from whom it may demand, some future
day, all that those of our day have endured and given.

In your former book, you retraced for us the early life of Leopold I.,
our first king. When I congratulated you on your conscientious work,
in depicting for us the early days of the man who has very justly been
called Leopold the Wise, I little thought that you would soon be the
chronicler of the army of his grandson, acknowledged by the whole
world, as the champion of loyalty and honour, the incarnation of an
oppressed and valiant country.

How times have changed since then!

The horizon is brightening, though, and I hope that, in order to
complete your work, you may be able to connect the past with the
present and sketch for us the History of this gigantic struggle, in
which the indomitable courage of the Belgians, led by Albert I., will
have preserved