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NEWS FROM BELGI^UM AND THE BELGIAN CONGO BELGIAN INFORMATION CENTER 6 3 0 FIFTH AVENUE. NEW YO,R.K. N. Y. CIRCLE 6 2450 All material pukllshed In NEWS FROM BELGIUM may be reprinted without permission. Please send copies of material In which quotations are used to this ofDce. THESE PERIODICAL BULLETINS MAY BE OBTAINED FREE ON REQUEST. On Daydreams and Democracy We are entitled to our dreams: to those Those who have no daydreams or who which come by night and so smoothly efface gave them up, get drunk: on words, on the boundaries between reality and phan• rhythm, on work, on drink. Drinking is the tasy, freeing us from the limitations of the easiest way of shedding the thousand shack' outside world, which are apt in the long les that bind us to our duties, our sorrowi run to kill our energies and depress our and the manifold other forms of our medi• spirit. We are told that the longest dream ocrity. A wise man never blames a drunk• lasts only from two to three minutes, but ard. He almost never blames anybody 6ul in that short time we can go through a hun• himself. Moralists strafe hepcats for their dred adventures until fear or an overbur• rhythmic orgies and predict the downfaU dening joy awakes us. At least when sleep• of our civilization if Frank Sinatra is allovcr ing we live "dangerously." But we also de• ed to go on cooing to lovelorn youngsters. serve our daydreams. They are a safety valve Why shouldn't these young people think and a consolation. The tired executive in that the world is just romance and moon• his office, with the rain streaming down his shine? Who would have the heart to deprive windowpanes, talks about sunshine and them of that vigorous and grave exercise palms. The traveler in his hotel room — it they call rug-cutting, if that is the only way hasn't been "made" yet on account of the they have of escaping boredom and a feel• personnel shortage — alone with his pipe ing of uselessness which is the greatest men and a dirty Gideon bible, longs for his fire• ace of youth? place at home. The intellectual fighting We have our individual dreams, but wt against an unending avalanche of books also have our dreams in common. We dream says, "I'll take to the woods," and the farm• as Joe Doaks, but we also dream by con• er's daughter wants to see Broadway. tagion, as citizens; we have our national and VOL. IV, No. 5 FEBRUARY 5, 1S44 NEWS FROM BELGhUM AND THE BELGIAN CONGO BELGIAN INFORMATION CENTER 6 3 0 FIFTH AVENUE. NEW YO,R,K, N. Y. CIRCLE 6 2450 All mattrlal pukllshed In NEWS FROM BELGIUM may be reprinted without permission. Please send copies of material In which quotations are used to this ofDce. THESE PERIODICAL BULLETINS MAT BE OBTAINED FREE ON REQUEST. On Daydreams and Democracy IFe are entitled to our dreams: to those Those who have no daydreams or who which come by night and so smoothly efface gave them up, get drunk: on words, on the boundaries between reality and phan• rhythm, on work, on drink. Drinking is the tasy, freeing us from the limitations of the easiest way of shedding the thousand shacks outside world, which are apt in the long les that bind us to our duties, our sorrows run to kill our energies and depress our and the manifold other forms of our medu spirit. We are told that the longest dream ocrity. A wise man never blames a drunks lasts only from two to three minutes, but ard. He almost never blames anybody bui in that short time we can go through a hun• himself. Moralists strafe hepcats for their dred adventures until fear or an overbur• rhythmic orgies and predict the downfaU dening joy awakes us. At least when sleep• of our civilization if Frank Sinatra is allov>- ing we live "dangerously." But we also de• ed to go on cooing to lovelorn youngsters. serve our daydreams. They are a safety valve Why shouldn't these young people think and a consolation. The tired executive in that the world is just romance and moon• his office, with the rain streaming down his shine? Who would have the heart to deprive windowpanes, talks about sunshine and them of that vigorous and grave exercise palms. The traveler in his hotel room — it they call rug-cutting, if that is the only way hasnt been "made" yet on account of the they have of escaping boredom and a feel• personnel shortage — alone with his pipe ing of uselessness which is the greatest men and a dirty Gideon bible, longs for his fire• ace of youth? place at home. The intellectual fighting We have our individual dreams, but wt against an unending avalanche of books also have our dreams in common. We dream says, "I'll take to the woods," and the farm• as Joe Doaks, but we also dream by con• er's daughter wants to see Broadway. tagion, as citizens; we have our national and NEWS FROM BELGIUM FEBEUAKY 5, 1944 even our international daydreams. Right mode of living and a conception of world now our dream is to see democracy estab• relations different from Eurasia, it is imper• lished all over the world. Such is our ideal. ative that we should know each other bet• Americans know very well that democracy ter. The United States have applied or tried in these United States is far from perfect, to apply democracy on a large scale: they that a lot is to be done, and that several have succeeded. In their rightful satisfaction groups in this country feel that it is sheer with this remarkable success they sometimes hypocrisy to proclaim a belief in democracy forget that democracy was not invented and at the same time to permit conditions here, that it has been practiced and has to exist which are shameful from the human worked effectively for many centuries in standpoint. They know too that some peo• several European countries. Bringing de• ple associate democracy with lawlessness mocracy to Belgium, for instance, would be and they remember the astonishing answer carrying coals to Newcastle. two girls gave when arrested for picking Of course we owe everything to the flowers in a public park: "They're ours as Greeks; no better, no more eloquent defense well as anybody else's, aren't they? This is of local democracy has ever been given than a democracy!" the one the historian of the Peloponnesian It is inevitable that when dealing with an War, Thucydides, records as being delivered idea as important and delicate as the demo• by Pericles on the dead of Athens. Pericles cratic faith, misinterpretations will arise. does not exalt "Greek" democracy. No, he Religion may lead to enraptured mysticism, pictures the political regime of Athens, a but ever so often it leads to plain bigotry. small town according to our modern con• Politics can lead to statesmanship, but they cepts, but in that city the majority rules, can also occasion vulgar graft. Human na• there is no compulsion as in Sparta, there ture is such that any noble idea suffers from are no secret weapons. Any stranger can being successively handled by more or less walk around and observe the defenses of intelligent or interested people. Fortunately the town. But although nobody is educated public interest among the Allied nations in for war, in times of danger everybody goes the democratic idea does not suffer from out and fights with determination and valor. selfish motives. After all, it matters little to Among these "amateurs" in warfare, these the average American if the Bolivians or "military idiots," as the Spartans esteemed the Uruguayans decide to have a Fascist or them, the love of the democratic homeland a democratic form of government. But if was so great that the tomb of Aeschylus, the these people take the wrong course he will father of the Greek drama, is inscribed not be genuinely affected, because he feels it is with any reference to his tragedies, but a pity that they should err on the road to a with the words, "of his noble prowess the better world, his dreamland, his universal grove of Marathon can speak." Utopia. The Belgian cities, especially the towns With anxiety and even with tenderness, of Flanders, have for seven centuries studied Americans ask the question: "Will Belgium democracy in anima vili, as experimental be a democracy after the war?" And they subjects. The towns originated around a are wont to add: "Will the monarchy go feudal castle or around a prosperous abbey, on?" It was Rabelais who first remarked, and when the inhabitants had grown nu• "Half the world does not know how the merous enough they exacted certain ar• other half lives." In Rabelais' time this may rangements from the feudal lords or abbots. have been of little importance, because one They made a contract, they received a char• hemisphere could not learn anything from ter defining their rights and their obliga• the other, but now that the Western hemis• tions. Of course the lord did not wish to phere has found its way, has developed a lose face in the proceedings. He stuck to the [38] NEWS FROM BELQITTM FEBRUARY 5, 1944 theory that his power was a hereditary and portant change had to be made in this celestial privilege. If he consented to aban• text, notwithstanding the rapid and radical don a fragment of his authority, that act changes in the social and economic aspect should be considered a gracious gesture on of the Kingdom.