E-text prepared by Brian Coe, Graeme Mackreth, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org) Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/cu31924027945017 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.