The explanation of this is not merely that the Flemish extremists are what nationalist extremists always are. There is something more in it. They do not believe in Belgium because they do not believe that Belgium is what M. Pirenne makes it out to be. When they look at the other half of Belgium they are struck, they are indeed obsessed, by one thing: the Walloons are French. It is not only that they speak French. So do the French Canadians, who are not like the French of France in character or sympathy or anything much except speech. But the Walloons are distinguished from the inhabitants of the French Republic by little except their political allegiance. They model themselves on the French. Their classical literature is that of France. Brussels is a little Paris. And, although they are politically independent, they have allowed Belgian policy since the war to co-operate very closely with French policy. Discontented critics, who do not think this accords with Belgian interests, say that the Walloons have made Belgium a client-State of France. The closer the Walloons are to France, the less they are likely to give way to Flemish demands. Behind the Walloon resistance the Flemings see French wealth and power, if not French ambition.

Their

What ground there is for this as an interpretation of the present state of things it would not be easy to say. It is certainly sometimes overdone. For the moment we are concerned only with its relation to aims for the future, and here there is no uncertainty. Separation between the Flemings and the Walloons would mean to all intents and purposes absorption of the Walloons by France. There is a Belgian patriotism and a Flemish patriotism, but a Walloon patriotism there is not. Belgium is a State; Flanders might be a State, but the country of the Walloons never has been and never could be a State to itself. In England it has not even a name. To talk seriously about dividing Belgium is therefore to consider the possibility of adding three million people to France. From the point of view of France it is hard to see any inherent objection to that. For the best of the French-speaking Belgians themselves, for M. Pirenne, for instance, it would mean the failure of an endeavour, the end of a loyalty; but it would have the compensations which membership in a great nation must always bring. There is, however, no reason for imagining that French statesmen desire it. It would mean that France would be unable to exercise, through the Walloons, influence over the

Flemings. Three million subjects might be less useful than seven million allies. Separation, therefore, between the Flemings and the Walloons cannot be, for France, more than a pis aller.

It may, however, be the destiny of the Walloons to become citizens of a greater France. Spiritually their opponents think they belong to it already. But this interpretation of the future and the present has a counterpart on the other side of the languagefrontier. If the Walloons have their French neighbours, neither are the Flemings without their kinsmen. I have already said something about the way in which some of them allowed the Germans, whose aims were not disinterested, to act in that nominal capacity before and during the war. I need not say more, because this temporary experience has no place in either the practical or the theoretical politics of to-day. The kinsmen to whom the Flemish extremists are looking now are nearer in kinship and would be less embarrassing as protectors: they are the Dutch. The desire for co-operation from over the Dutch frontier has given birth to the idea of the Greater Netherlands, a unity of the Dutch and Flemish-speaking peoples.

Among "intellectuals" this idea has been germinating for some years, but it has only recently been at all widely entertained, and the first really substantial exposition of it appeared last year in Professor Geyl's "De Groot-Nederlandsche Gedachte." This book is the more interesting to us because it has been written on English soil and by a man who knows England and the English well. Dr. Geyl is professor of Dutch history and institutions in the University of London. One of the essays of which his book consists is indeed a translation of three lectures which he gave in that university in 1920 and published in the English language, though through a Dutch publisher, with the title, "Holland and Belgium; their Common History and their Relations." Three of the other essays are also historical, but they are written by one who sees the past in the present and the future in the past. In their provocative eloquence they are like the first essay in the book, a survey of the Flemish question from the Dutch side, written last year. Part of Dr. Geyl's strength as a political writer lies in his frankness. He has not disguised, by any revision or harmonising, the development of his opinions in the past five years. His enthusiasm for the Great Netherlands idea has grown. In a number of controversial articles in the press, both in Holland and in Belgium,

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both in learned periodicals and in those which are widely read, he has thought it out and fought it out inch by inch. His conviction is making converts. Both his conviction and his moderation are

raising up gainsayers.

The first notable thing about his principle is the starting-point. Throughout the volume there is not to be found a trace of what could be called Dutch chauvinism. Dr. Geyl writes to persuade his countrymen, but he does not appeal to narrow or selfish interests. He does not want to use the Flemings for Dutch ends. He does not want to make Holland geographically larger, materially richer, physically stronger; or at least he cares little whether she becomes so or not. If I had to find one adjective to describe his attitude, I should call it generous. What he starts from is sympathy with the Flemings, who lack so much of what the Dutch have. As a writer he knows what language is to men. He knows it probably better for having lived long abroad. As a student of

political history he has constantly in mind the beneficent power which institutions may have, only on condition that they conform to the real divisions of mankind. He asks whether either half of the Dutch-speaking population can get on spiritually without the other. He sees that the sympathy of individual Dutchmen would do much and their legitimate help much more to further the Flemish aims; that even the sympathy, within the accepted bounds of international custom and courtesy, of the Dutch government might be almost decisive. He asks for these to be given disinterestedly, and he sees that such disinterestedness would have its reward in the intellectual and spiritual life of the Dutch. He might have taken lower ground. I remember a Dutch publisher who favoured the Flemish movement because he thought it would increase the circulation of Dutch books. The Great Netherlands propaganda is the stronger for being without these baser motives.

It must not be imagined, and Dr. Geyl does not imagine, that the Dutch nation or government is likely to start on a crusade in favour of Flemish claims. At present, broadly speaking, the feeling between the Dutch and the Flemings is not remarkably friendly. The Flemings certainly do not all look to the Dutch as the Walloons look to the French. Their history has been too diverse. They have their own literature and their own memories. Nor do the Dutch, although many of them appreciate at least Flemish literature, regard them as brothers under alien rule.

Flanders will never be a Holland "irredenta." The experiment of political union has been tried, and it not only failed, but the failure has been little regretted in Holland. To be sure, if union were tried again the conditions would be quite different. The old failure cannot be said by itself to constitute a final warning against such an experiment. But the Dutch would have to shake themselves out of some of their most fixed political habits. They would have to assimilate the great port of Antwerp into their economic system. They would cease to have a protestant or indifferent majority, and would get a Catholic majority, politically active and organized. The Dutch rightly pride themselves on a sober sense of realities, and very little of this sense is needed to see that, even if Holland and Flanders alone were concerned, the political union of the Dutch with the Flemings could come about only through terrible convulsions. But other countries are concerned in the fate of Antwerp, of Ostend, and of Zeebrugge. Those names are enough to remind any responsible politician that experiments in this corner of the world must not be undertaken lightly.

Professor Geyl is a responsible politician. He disappoints the Flemish extremists because he will not shout for the impossible. His combination of intense feeling with steady moderation is impressive. It appears to me that what he has to say about the historical side of his question is illuminating and that his practical advice is weighty. The historical questions cannot be discussed at all fully here. They are those of the origins of Dutch nationality, and of the causes of the failure, both in the late sixteenth century and in the early nineteenth, of the attempts to unite the Dutch and Flemish Netherlands. It has been almost unanimously assumed by Dutch historians that the two regions have remained politically separate because there were insuperable differences between the populations. Good historians have scarcely considered the possibility that the two countries were separate, not because they were different, but were different because they were separate, which involves the further possibility that they are not so fundamentally different as is usually supposed. Dr. Geyl emphasizes what may be called the accidental and superficial causes of separation, and they needed emphasizing. He has not yet ousted the orthodox view from the text-books and the lecture-rooms, but he has made it look to its proofs, and it may

be

said with some confidence that his work will ultimately leave its mark on the Dutch interpretation of the national history.

If it does so it will prepare the way for the practical conclusion of Dr. Geyl that, crusades and catastrophes being left out of account, as they must be, the most hopeful future for the Flemings and for Belgium lies in the fulfilment of one part of the Great Netherlands idea. He himself is clearly attracted very strongly by the notion of a Great Netherlands political union; but he does not advocate it. He recognises that this ideal is impracticable. He argues for the attainable compromise of a Great Netherlands unity outside politics. To put the scheme concisely, his proposal is to let the frontiers stay where they are, but let the Dutch be to the Flemings what the French already are to the Walloons. Let the Belgian State cease to be an instrument for centralizing the country and effacing the Flemish individuality. Let it become a co-operation between two free peoples, each with its powerful neighbour, but each loyal to the other and to the common weal. Even this is neither a modest nor an easy programme. It has its risks, but it does not ignore the requirements of safety.

Two general comments may be made without impertinence by an Englishman sincerely friendly to all the peoples who are directly concerned. The first touches Dr. Geyl's general attitude to the national sentiment. It is the right attitude. It recognises, indeed it hails enthusiastically, the creative force of nationalism, but it sees that this force may take the form of a feeling of community which can transcend frontiers. Whatever makes a nation, it is not a line of customs-houses and sentry-boxes. The best hope for the Flemings is to see that the Great Netherlands ideal could be realized without a change of political allegiance, perhaps even more fully than with that change. A second comment concerns British interests. Here and there in the literature of the Flemish movement a kind of syllogism appears of which the shadow may be seen occasionally in the pages of Dr. Geyl. British interests and Dutch interests are in this region substantially the same : Dutch interests and Flemish interests are identical: therefore British interests and Flemish interests are identical. That is logic, not business. As yet nothing that has happened in Belgium since the war has affected any British interest whatsoever, either favourably or detrimentally. No one can tell whether anything which may happen there would affect us, nor in what way. All such speculations are idle and remote.