In literature, written in French, Brussels is to Paris something as Dublin is to London. The same gibes at the “Brussels Brogue,” the same uneasy and all but indignant tremor when a great Belgian writer steps on the scene, the same grudged applause, finally the same adulation. It is a notable fact that most of the Belgians who have planted conquering banners in French literature are of Flemish stock--Maeterlinck, Verhaeren, Rodenbach, Cammaerts. Their imagination is coloured by two traditions. Of Maeterlinck one need say nothing. Verhaeren is certainly one of our supreme living poets, perhaps the supreme poet of our civilisation. Rodenbach, more local, is for ever part of the beauty and sadness of Bruges. Cammaerts is known by his exquisite songs. Camille Lemonnier, the painter and author, is perhaps the most vital and abundant representative of the Walloon stream of influence. * * * * * Such is an inadequate outline, a cinema survey of the work and the place of Belgian in time of peace. Such was the little, great nation that William the Treaty-Breaker has violated and ravaged. When one remembers it all--memory on golden memory, remembers the black ruins where a year ago men laboured and prayed at peace with other men, remembers the slow building-up and the sudden devastation, eighty years gone in a fortnight--does not the heart harden against these metaphysical barbarians of Prussia? Belgium to-day is the most illustrious evicted tenant of modern history. But, her enemies put down, she will return. _Vive la Belgique!_ “G.H.Q.” There is a certain magic in initial letters, and they seem to be most magical when they run in trinities. Who has not heard of the G.O.M. and B.M.G and A.B.C. and G.B.S. and that R.I.P. which has a richer gloom than even Raleigh’s forlorn _Hic Jacet_? But in this war the greatest of all is G.H.Q. G.H.Q. stands for General Headquarters, known to most newspaper readers as the place where the telegrams come from to depress or to cheer us. But they have a great deal more to do at G.H.Q. than merely to receive messages from the fighting front, and to send them home. Having had the privilege of paying a visit there within the last ten days, I can realise that fact with the vivid actuality of a thing seen. If the Commander-in-Chief and his General Staff are the brain of an army, cerebellum and cerebrum, G.H.Q. supplies its nervous and motor system. Nerves, efferent and afferent, carrying in thrills of sensation and carrying out waves of movement to the extreme limits of the military organism, muscles in association with the nerves--these make up G.H.Q. Let me detail some of its activities.