Chroniclers of Belgian history divide the period between 1555 and 1830 into six sections: the devastating reign of Philip Second of Spain; the more beneficent and independent reign of Philip’s daughter and her husband, Archduke Albert; the renewal of direct Spanish rule; Austrian rule; French rule; and Dutch rule. For more than a century most of Europe’s battles were fought on Belgian soil. “The Netherlands,” a writer declared in 1642, “have been for many years the very cock-pit of Christendom, the school of arms and rendezvous of adventurous spirits.” The battledore of war drove Belgium, the shuttlecock, to Spain, then to Austria, to France, and back to Austria again. At the end of the French Revolution all the provinces, including Liège, became part of France. Under the Republic and during the reign of Napoleon I., Belgium enjoyed a period of comparative peace. In 1814, against the will of the people, their land was ceded to the Dutch by the Congress of Vienna. By the Revolution of 1830, Belgium became an independent nation. Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg was elected the first King. The perpetual neutrality of Belgium was insured by the leading powers of Europe, though the people would have resisted this agreement if the will of England and Prussia had not prevailed to make the war-torn territory a bulwark against France. Leopold I. was succeeded in 1865 by Leopold II., who advanced the industrial status of the country, and brought about the annexation of the Congo Free State, in Africa. Albert, son of this monarch’s brother, came to the throne in 1909. Though its foundations as an independent nation were several times threatened, the neutrality of the kingdom was preserved until the momentous year 1914, when the treaty executed eighty-three years before was contemptuously regarded by the Germans as but “a scrap of paper.” Once more, Belgium became the “cock-pit of Europe,” and for four years suffered the ravages of the most ruthless war in history. The King and Queen, driven out of Brussels by the invasion of the Teutonic hordes, took refuge in La Panne, a village just north of the French boundary. By the treaty of Versailles the Belgian frontiers were again restored. The inhabitants of a country proverbially industrious are now making commercial and agricultural history, undoing as far as possible the work of the Hun. WRITTEN FOR THE MENTOR BY RUTH KEDZIE WOOD ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR. VOL. 8, No. 3, SERIAL No. 199 COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION. INC. [Illustration: THE PALACE OF JUSTICE, BRUSSELS] _BELGIUM_ _Government and Institutions_ TWO