VOL. Ill, No. 49 DECEMBER 4, 1943 NEWS FROM BELGIU AND THE BELGIAN CONGO

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That Which Diverts and Makes Mirth"

N. Webster says — and who would dare college boys; it belonged to everybody, rich to contradict him — that sport is "that which or poor, young or old, and the half center diverts and makes mirth." Thus, contrary and goal-keepers who, on Sunday afternoon, to what some people seem to believe, he does would kick the ball sky-high, or slip in the not claim that sport is a kind of religion, a mud of a rain-soaked field defending the lifetime occupation or a profession. It is goal, would sit on Monday morning behind always a good idea to listen to Mr. Webster, the cashier s desk at a bank or defend the Noah. widow and the orphan in court. If at a gathering of Belgians before the The major event of the soccer year was war someone had stood up and asked. "Is the match between Holland and Belgium, there a sportsman in the house?" he would held alternately in Rotterdam and in Ant• have been met by silence, for no Belgian has werp. Thousands of Dutchmen used to in• ever taken sports seriously enough to con• vade Antwerp on that occasion, and all the fess that he spent most of his time "divert• cafe and restaurant owners in town treach• ing himself and making mirth." erously implored the gods that Holland Sport in prewar Belgium was a pastime, might win, for in that event the Dutchmen an honorable one indeed, but one on which would paint the town red for a night. If serious people looked a bit askance. they lost, they would noiselessly steal back Notwithstanding this reserved attitude, to their canals without profiting the Ant• the Belgians excelled in several forms of werp liquor trade at all. sport. They played soccer beautifully, they But bicycling was the real national craze. swam well, and when they got hold of a bi• It could go on any time, anywhere, in ivinter cycle, feiv people in Europe could keep up as well as in summer. Over the long flat with them. roads of , boys in their 'teens would Football never became a national sport, race home from school on their bicycles, but local soccer teams were very popular. farmhands and bricklayers would crouch Soccer was not the exclusive privilege of over the handlebars, streamlining them- NEWS FEOM BELGIUM DECEMBEE 4, 1943 selves against the strong winds which bend ling administration, acting for the Germans, the poplars and the elms permanently to• and the different sports associations. The ward the northwest. main reason for the conflict was that the Every village carnival included a bicycle Nazis wanted to divide sport activities along race, and some towns would suddenly get linguistic lines, which was not only contrary on the map for having discovered a perfect to the associations' traditional policy but figure eight circuit for bicycle contests. The absurd from a practical standpoint. When champions rated as high in popularity as the local associations tried to organize in- any American baseball star. In recent years terurban bicycle races, the Quislings inter• even girl racers became famous in the field. vened and ordered certain mayors to forbid The most famous contest, however, was the the races from taking place on their territo• circuit of France held every year, and which ries. When soccer matches were held in was followed by the entire Belgian popula• defiance of Nazi orders, the Germans dis• tion — even including those who usually did persed the crowds by charging onto the not care for sports—with breathless anxiety. soccer fields with their cavalry. Chaos en• As a rule, Belgian national pride was upheld sued. and one could be certain that the Belgians In Germany, sports have been a means of would be foremost among the winners. With influencing public opinion. The display of the money won in France the champion usu• well-trained athletic men and women was ally settled down, married a sweet plump supposed to prove in some way the great• girl from his home town, opened a cafe and ness of the Nazi regime, as well as its youth• spent the rest of his life talking about the ful vigor. Sport served the Cause and there• way he climbed the Pyrenees or the time fore was a weapon. The Belgians did not his tires blew out on the outrageous cob• want a peaceful pastime to become a poli• blestones of the industrial cities of northern tical instrument. They were fed up with France. "ersatzes" and they insisted on taking their Once a year in the hills of Walloonia, au• sports straight. Difficulties of transportation tomobile races were held at Francorchamps and communication in occupied Belgium when the daredevils of both hemispheres made national competitions impossible. would risk their lives with complete non• Only the federations controlled by the Na• chalance. Some people played tennis, a few zis were in a position to organize contests played golf, but one can safely say that a of that kind, but the Belgians boycotted large percentage of sporting people in Bel• these matches, and most of the time the col• gium never took part in any sport at all, laborationist sportsmen displayed their skill except by getting their feet wet on the edge before empty benches. of a soccer field or shouting themselves Today sports activities are greatly handi• hoarse to encourage the demi-gods of the bi• capped by the physical condition of the cycle. Most of the Belgians were merely Belgian population. In September 1942, a sport fans. Dutch weekly reported that within the short After the Germans invaded Belgium, period of two days, three boxers in Belgium they tried to take over and regulate sports had been killed in the ring. Since they were for their own political purposes. There were young people, this indicates that their pow• two major organizations in existence — the er of resistance was extremely low. The pa• Olympic Committee and the Belgian Fed• per reported that in many instances dope eration of Sports Associations. The Germans had been used in sports events and that a tried to win over both and to incorporate great number of players had been crippled them in their "New Order" policy. But be• for life on account of the practices em• fore long strong opposition arose, and guer• ployed by the Germans or by the managers rilla warfare broke out between the Quis• of the sports matches.

[386] h/mieq • High School Lib. 2935 Polk Street NEWS FEOM BELGIUM DECEMBEE 4, 1943

Under the pretense that life had returned ber 1, in protest against the decrees of the to normal in Belgium, the Germans insisted German Sports Commissioner. This propo• on having Belgian sportsmen participate in sal was accepted, and the various Belgian international events, evidently with a poli• sports associations have published their de• tical purpose in mind. The Olympic Com• cision to refuse all contact with the officials mittee in charge of this matter issued an of the sports commission and to forbid their order to all its members, forbidding them clubs and members to take part in any pub• to take part in sports events outside of Bel• lic sports event, as of November 1. The gium and especially in Germany. Most of Quisling press interprets this decision as the associations followed this example to "tantamount to a declaration of war on the the great dismay of the Germans. Commission." Confronted with this opposition, the Na• When the Nazis say that Nazism is a phi• zis decided that the time had come to or• losophy which influences and changes the ganize Belgian sport, and they appointed a aspect of every human activity in the state, sports commissioner from among their Rex- they are perfectly right. Indeed, wherever ist friends. They chose Pierre Daye, a news• they can, they apply the idea that the indi• paperman and former Rexist deputy, whose vidual is essentially a part of the state and main contribution to sport in the past had that his every act should be of service to been the fact that he once belonged to a the nation, i.e. the Nazi machine. No human group of nudists. He eagerly accepted this values escape the contamination of Nazism. new job, although even the Quisling news• In the occupied countries, it is the role of papers felt that the field of his proposed all decent people to repel these attacks activities was entirely new to him. His ap• wherever they occur. pointment was preceded by a remarkable Before the war, it was a standing rule in incident. The Olympic Committee got hold Belgium that local sports associations, even of the order creating the sports commission those devoted to the innocent pastime of a few weeks before it was published. It dis• dart throwing or pigeon races, should pro• tributed this document to all sports organ• claim in the first paragraph of their by-laws izations, urging them to oppose it and not that they were "buiten en boven alle poli• to recognize either Pierre Daye or his or• tick" (beyond and above politics). It is the ganization. irony of fate that under the German regime In the beginning of October of this year this rather ridiculous and innocent declara• the Olympic Committee summoned the rep• tion of principle should become the expres• resentatives of all the sports associations sion of human decency in the face of tyr• and submitted a formal proposal that all anny. sports activities should cease as of Novem• —THE EDITOR.

Two Low-German Tongues

by WALTER FORD ^ British journalist compares the English and Hemish ton• gues and finds them brothers under the skin. Reprinted from the Belgian monthly. Message, published in London.

The title of this article has nothing to do with How can two such widely different languages the broadcasts of Hitler and Goebbels. It is sim• be classified together, it may be asked ? JSTot long ply the way in which English and Flemish are ago we gently remonstrated with a well-known described in comparative philology, the study English writer (incidentally also a well-known of the family trees of languages. friend of Belgium) who had even mistaken the

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Flemish language for "some outlandish dialect." and a spurious erudition, the native words have This mistake is not uncommon; in fact I should been still further driven from our speech, until think the only ideas most Englishmen have about a newspaper item sometimes looks more like Flemish are, first, that it is an almost impos• Latin than like the blood-brother of Flemish. sible feat for any Englishman to learn such a In spite of all this, even today Flemish is barbaric tongue, and second, that if he does learn not at all a difficult language for an Englishman it, the knowledge will be useless outside one to learn. If at first glance it looks stranger to part of Belgium, the only place where this ob• him than French, this impression is very decep• scure dialect is spoken. tive. As soon as the learner fixes his attention Yet, in the great family-tree of Indo-Euro• on native English words, he will see the close pean laiigTiages, which embraces nearly all the relationship, and as soon as he is accustomed tongues of Europe and India from Hindustani to the way in which Flemish builds up com• to Portuguese and from Swedish to Greek, the pound words from the basic native ones instead nearest relative of English is Flemish.* En• of borrowing a Latin word to express each ab• glish and Flemish are brother tongues. stract or complex notion, he will acquire a large The English reader may be incredulous. Why Flemish vocabulary with ease. does a page of Onafhankelijk Belgie look so English and Flemish are of such closely allied strange to him at first glance ? Why can he some• stock that after hundreds of years of compara• times recognize a third of the words at once in tive isolation from each other, they still have a page of French or Italian even if he never a number of everyday words which are identic• learned a word of it, but so few in a page of ally written in the two languages: such are hed, Flemish ? God, hand, Jiang, land, lip, lot, man, mist, over, It is all William the Conqueror's fault. It is school, water, wind. Thousands of words difl^er hardly too much to say that but for 1066 and only in one or two letters and are quickly recog• all that. Englishmen and Flemings might still nized; thus, initial z often corresponds to En• be able to understand each other on many sub• glish s, and the meaning of zand, zelf, zend, jects without taking any language lessons. zeven, zilver, zing, zit, is obvious. Similarly ini• The native words of English are nearly all tial V often corresponds to English /; this at very closely related to similar words in Flemish. once gives us the meaning of vast, ven, vin, vind, Our French-looking words are borrowed ones; vinger, vlag, vriend. A few random specimens borrowed from Norman French, because this of other words of which the translation may was the language of the Court for hundreds of safely be guessed are: honger, pyp, lean, appel, years after the Conquest, or from Parisian tvoord, hlok, schip, Moh. French and from Latin by students and scholars It is not necessary to delve into books for who admired the civilizations of France and these resemblances; in happier times the holi- ancient Home. In fact, Dr. Johnson must share daymaker in will recognize the common the blame with William the Conqueror for our roots of the two languages in the very street lack of understanding of Flemish. signs. Though it is nothing like "Trams stop For example, Johnson scribbled in his diary: here," he will have no difficulty in fathoming the "a great black fellow bounced up from the bed meaning of Tramstillstand! The ingenious clock one of us was to lie on." For publication, he in the park, fashioned of flower-beds, with even altered this to: "From the couch upon which the moving hands smothered in growing flowers, one of us was to repose, there rose one black as he will see described as the bloemenuurwerlc, or a Cyclops from the forge." blooms-hour-work; and could he expect much Now the word "bed" is as good Flemish as plainer English in a foreign land than Oostende English; "bounce" is the Flemish hons, in this and Westende themselves ? case actually borrowed from Flemish in the So close are the two tongues in their origins thirteenth century; "lie" is first cousin to Flem• that when philologists are studying the English ish liggen; but "couch" and "repose" are pure of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, they French. often find it impossible to say whether a Flem• In this way, in the search for a false elegance ish-looking word appearing for the first time in the annals of those years has really been bor• * If we except the dialect of the Frisian Islands, the group strung out in a chain oft the coast of Holland. rowed, say, from Flemish traders in England,

[388] Belgian Belle Brugge Bonnets. These Belgian women, although they have lived in this country for many years, have kept the clotlir^n which they formerly wore in the old world. Today, at festive gatherings they still dress in their regional costumes. Besides long skirts and aprons, the women are wearing high necked blouses pinned at the neck with a large oval pin and on their heads the hand-made bonnets, typical of the Brugge, or western section of the country. From rhe Hills and the Flat Country. The seated woman is wearing a peasant shawl and a Flemish bon• net and probably comes from the flat farming country of Flanders. The bonnet is generally worn tied in a big bow under the chin. The young girl is wearing a hat typical of the Ardennes hill country in southern Walloonia. bS°n.tl°?ifX .«.'''g'\"-A/"erican women still prefer this specialty of their homeland to American sweet bread. Here, they are packmg the honeycake loaves in boxes to send to Belgian soldiers in German prison camps.

Packages for Prisoners. Here the honey cake is packed and ready to be shipped to Geneva, SwitiwUnd, where It will be forwarded to Germany. The orders from relatives are being checked and the package* addressed to individual prisoners. NEWS FEOM BELGIUM DECEMBEE 4, 1943 or whether it is a native word, used centuries just as in Flemish, to be independent is to be before by the first Anglo-Saxon invaders of "no hanger-on." I^ritain, which does not happen to have been Compounds of this kind are thus easily mem• preserved in any earlier manuscript. orized although they may have no single letter It would probably be no exaggeration to say in common with the English equivalent. that even today, more than half of the most It is noteworthy that English writers who frequent Flemish words can be very easily mem• are commonly considered the greatest are also, orized by an Englishman for one or another of generally speaking, those who use the highest the following reasons: proportion of native words. This is not merely (1) Close resemblance to English in every a vagiie impression gathered from reading: en• way, as in the examples above; thusiastic philologists have even gone so far as (2) Similar pronunciation though spelling to classify and count all the words in Shakes• diifers; thus voet corresponds to "foot" and is peare, Tennyson, Johnson and others. They pronounced rather like the English word, not awarded the highest score to Shakespeare, with, like "vote"; if I remember rightly, 97 per cent freedom from (3) Similar spelling though pronunciation latinity. It follows from this that Shakespeare's differs: thus goed—"good," thou it is pro• English is much nearer to Flemish than most. nounced rather like "hoot"; As a painless way of imbibing a good deal of (4) Eesemblance to an English word of dif• Flemish vocabulary and idiom, I recommend all ferent but obviously related meaning: thus zwart who know their Shakespeare well to read him in Dutch translation. Any passage familiar in ="black," but recalls "zwart," "swarthy"; hlin- English will be immediately recognized in the ken = 'to sound," but recalls "clink"; Dutch, and for the most part the structure of (5) Close resemblance to: the Dutch sentence and the correspondence of (a) obsolete English words: thus Flemish wist — knew is good Chaucer, and is still each word will be obvious, though a proportion used by poetasters; (b) dialect English: of the words be quite imlike the English. To thus ken and kerk are good currency north give a sample: of the Tweed or south of the Scheldt estu• Romeinen, vrienden, burgers, leent my 't oor; ary; (c) English slang: thus krankzinnig Begraven kom ik Caesar, niet hem pryzen. = mad, and recalls cranky. Het kwaad, dat menschen doen, leeft na hen voort; Het goed wordt vaak met hun gebeent' begraven. (6) A word is borrowed from French, Latin Zoo moge't zyn met Caesar. or Greek into both English and Flemish; thus But, the reader may protest, you are writing influence; requeinfluencereen —st = request; about Flemish, and you suddenly switch on to communicatie — communication; photografie Dutch! Here we come to the second fallacy cur• = photography. rent in England: the idea that Flemish is an (7) Compound words are built up from rec• obscure dialect, useless outside the north-west ognizable roots. Thus prefix voor = fore-; zicht corner of Belgium. Modern literary Flemish is = sight. Hence voorzichtig= "fore-sight-ish," practically indistinguishable from Dutch. It dif• prudent; and voorzichtigheid = "fore-sight-ish- fers less than some American does from English. hood," prudence. Learn to write the language of the majority of A curious point about these compounds is Belgians, and you have learned to write the lan• that sometimes the logic of them is not immedi• guage of nine million Dutchmen in Holland ately apparent in the Flemish, but proves on and the great Dutch Colonial Empire, not to analysis to be exactly parallel in the Latin mention over a million South Africans who original of our corresponding English word, would be able to understand it, though most of which we no longer think of as a compound. them write and speak a rather transformed ver• Thus onafhankelijk — "un-from-hang-ish" = sion of it themselves; you will also have learned independent, which again can be split into pre• one of thet official languages of the vast, rich cisely the same elements, though to our minds Belgian Congo, one of the countries of the fu• it has become a prime word, without even any ture. suggestion of a metaphorical use of "hang." To return to Shakespeare, mention of him Nevertheless, in good, robust, colloquial English, reminds us that the average educated English-

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man's complete imfamiliarity with Flemish is ship as being genuine Flemish proverbs current a development of the past three hundred years. in the fifteenth century in such forms as "Luttel In Tudor times, in the Middle Ages, and per• onderwin, brengt veel rusten in," and "waer haps earlier, there was such a coming and go• spot, quaet spot." ing between Flanders and Britain about the In some of Webster's plays there are even businesses of trade, art, and war, that writers characters who express themselves in Flemish, and to some extent their public had a smatter• so there can be no doubt that some knowledge ing of Flemish, particularly when the Anglo- of it was fairly common, and not confined to Flemish wool trade was at its height. Chaucer men of letters. had visited Flanders, and evidently picked up Is it too much to hope that the settlement in at least some snatches of the speech. He quotes England of thousands of Flemish refugees— two Flemish proverbs of the time, one in the fishermen, merchant seamen, diamond workers Maunciple's Tale: and others with their families—together with The flemyng seith, and lerne it if thee leste, the work of the British Council, Belgian Insti• That litel Janglyng causeth muchel rest, tute and Anglo-Belgian Union in extending cul• and another in the Cook's Prologue: tural relations between the two countries, will Thou seist ful sooth, quod Roger, by my fey. again bring a day in which some acquaintance But "sooth pley, quaad pley," as the Fleming seith. with Flemish is as common in Englishmen as These sayings were for long unrecognized, but an acquaintance with English is among Bel• a few years ago were traced by Belgian scholar• gians ?

German workers are demoralized, but as there 1. Belgium are many Nazis spies among them, they only dare confide in the foreign workers. A. The War Patriots Believe Allied Invasion Immi• Invasion Casualty Census — Enquiries in nent — In spite of all the statements to the con• occupied Belgium have established that the Ger• trary that have been broadcast by Allied spokes• man invasion of May 1940 caused the deaths men, it is still believed in occupied Belgium that of 20,845 Belgians. the United Nations' offensive against the "At• The total is made up as follows: lantic Wall" of Europe is imminent. Military: Leaflets are being secretly circulated warn• In Belgium: 5,302 ing patriots that, as soon as the Allies land, In France: 790 the Germans will post up notices everywhere, In Holland: 250 In captivity: ordering all men between the ages of 18 and 60 879 to report at specified points, to be herded into 7,221 concentration camps. The leaflets go on to say that these orders should be disobeyed, whatever Civilians: threats the Germans may make. In Belgium: 6,624 In France (identified) 6,000 German Production Slumps — Belgian In France (unidentified) 1,000 workers deported to Germany are saying that 13,624 German war production has greatly decreased during the last few months. Total (military and civilians): 20,845 One factory which had received an order for The above figures do not include the victims ten tanks a day, could only produce three, not of air raids since the Belgian campaign ended. so much because of sabotage of machinery with• According to a census, 23,788 Belgian civil• in the plant as because of the workers' slow• ians were wounded during the Belgian cam• down. paign.

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Thirty thousand workers from Flanders are B. The Occupation reported to have been sent to the Austrian-Ital• Political Life ian frontier. The Germans, who have already deported Belgian Fascist Groups Attacked by Pa• more than half a million Belgian workers, have triots — The semi-military formations created announced their intention of requisitioning an• by the Germans under the name of "Walloon other 200,000 before the end of the year, and Guards," recruiting for which is entrusted to 100,000 in January and February 1944. the Kexists (French-speaking Belgian Fascists), are extremely discouraged by the repeated at• tacks that have thinned their ranks. Religious Life Kecent reports from occupied Belgium state Population Aroused Over Requisitioning that the Germans, fearing that patriots may be of Bells — The requisition of church bells con• insinuated with disastrous effects into the trai• tinues in Belgium in spite of increased protest tors' ranks, have disarmed No. 3 company of the on the part of the Belgian clergy and widespread Walloon Guards, in barracks at Mens. Any indignation and occasional violence on the part guards who refused to give up their arms were of the public. threatened with severe penalties, and even with In a small town near Toumai, a dozen women death. prevented the removal of the bells by taking In other districts, the Germans have consid• away the pulley, used to haul them down from erably reduced the number of rounds of am• the towers, weighting it and throwing it into munition issued to guards detailed to protect the water. A military guard had to be stationed the factories against the saboteurs. around the workers before the bells could be re• moved. In other towns the workers were stoned, Economic and Social Life belfry doors were found bolted and had to be Nazis, Fearing Allied Invasion, Increase forced, and volunteers stationed themselves in Deportations— In their fear of an Allied land• the towers night and day to toll the bells and ing, the Germans in occupied Belgium are ar• give the populace warning of their impending resting almost every able-bodied man in the removal. coastal areas. The men are arrested at their jobs, At Lommel, in Belgian Limburg, the parish• and the German gendarmerie do not even allow ioners, warned that the bells were soon to be them time enough to fetch their coats and their removed, painted the following lines on them: food, which they usually leave with their parked "Our bells are in your power. bicycles during working hours. But victory will escape you; And in our belfry tower Near Dunkirk, a funeral was broken up and Remain the ropes to hang you." all men were arrested and taken off in their The underground newspaper. Liberie, organ mourning clothes, which included, according to of the Liege Communist Party, requests all pa• local custom, bowler hats. The prisoners were triots, whether believers or not, to defend the sent to the concentration camps at Jabbeke and church bells. The newspaper comments on the Clemskerke, near Brugge, whence they were de• admirable unity displayed by the workingclass ported to Germany. population of the Liege area in preventing and Jabbeke concentration camp is guarded by hindering enforcement of the German decree. At Polish sentries, of whom the Belgians are not Hollogne, near Liege, parish priests refused to much afraid, and by Dutch Nazis, who are ruth• hand over the keys to the church, and the Ger• less and often fire on any fugitives. The prison• mans had to break the door open. When the bells ers' rations in this camp are a quarter of a loaf were taken down, the priest covered them with of bread a day, and a third of a can of soup the tricolor flag. A crowd of demonstrators as• every other day. sembled, and heaped flowers on the truck, sing• Families, from all parts of Flanders and ing the Belgian national anthem. even from France, were present at a recent de• At Ville St. Amand, Hainaut Province, pa• parture of deportees to Germany. They were triots working under cover of night carried off not allowed to approach the train, but managed two of the three bells taken down during the to get near enough to throw bread and money day by contractors in the enemy's pay. The bells to the prisoners. have not yet been traced.

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Cultural Life frain from any rash action. The enemy, it says, Brugge Museum Curator Dies —The death is on the watch for the slightest false move which would give him a pretext for ruthless repres• is reported, in Brugge, of Father Paul Allosse- sion. Discipline, which is the strength of armies, ry, curator of the Guide Gezelle Jruseum. must be their strict rule. Before resorting to Father Allossery was born at Gheluwe, West violence the population must follow events calm• Flanders, in 1875. In collaboration with Pro• ly, track down the traitors, and help to stimulate fessor Frank Baur, of Ghent University, he moral resistance. edited the complete works of Guide Gezelle, the celebrated Flemish poet. He was also the author of a history of the literature of . School Principals Refuse to Supply Lists of Pupils for Forced La6or—According to Black Market in Books — The Nouveau reports received from occupied Belgium, the Journal published in Brussels under German principals of several Belgian schools have been control, reports that a regular black market has arrested for refusing to supply the German la• developed in the book trade there, and protests bor services with lists of pupils who are on the against the "extravagant" prices paid for cer• point of completing their studies. tain works, "especially those by Anglo-Saxon writers." Liege Merchant Talks Back to Germans— The French translation of Gone with the The Germans asked a Liege merchant for certain Wind, by Margaret Mitchell, which cost 54 Bel• particulars with a view to making requisitions gian francs (about $1.70) when published, is later, and received only an incomplete reply. A hardly obtainable now at 1,200 to 1,500 francs. German officer sent for the merchant and asked ($40 to $48). why he had not replied more accurately to ques• The newspaper adds that this "fervor" is not tions put to him "in plain German." limited to English and American authors and "I don't understand German," said the Bel• gives other examples as follows: gian. Le Journal, by Andre Gide (a forbidden "You should know it. You had plenty of time work), was sold under the counter for 600 to learn it," replied the oiKcer. francs (about $17) at the end of 1940. It now "Pardon me," answered the citizen of Liege, brings 3,000 francs ($96). "but I am now over GO years old, and I have Corps et Ames, by Maxence van der Meersch, just time enough to learn one foreign language was snapped up, as soon as it appeared, for 400 —English. And I shall have to hurry up about and 450 francs (about $12.50 to $13). that, for the English are nearly here." Histoire de I'Armee Allemande, by Benoist- The interview was abruptly terminated, and Mechin, brings 300 francs (about $9). the Belgian merchant was sentenced to the Cita• The 16 volumes of the Proust series, worth del for ten days. 320 francs (about $9.50) in 1940, now sell like hot cakes at 3,000 francs ($96) upwards. And there is nothing luxurious about this edition, 2. Belgium Abroad says the quisling paper. When issued last year, an edition of Goethe's In the United States dramatic works was worth 175 francs ($5). Belgium Premiere at Columbia Univer• As soon as it reached the booksellers' shelves the sity -Under the sponsorship of Friends of Bel• price rose to 250 and 300 francs ($8 to $9). gium and Columbia University, the opera, "The "And we assure you that this is not a complete Two Misers," by Andre Gretry (Liege, 1741— list," adds the Nouveau Joumal. Montmorency, 1813) will have its American pre• miere under the direction of Mr. Nicholas Gold- Resistance to Nazi Occupation schmidt. Population Urged to Observe Discipline— An appreciation of this great Walloon com• The underground newspaper La Libre Belgique, poser was published in News from Belgium some in its Liege edition, warns the population to re• time ago.

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