News from Belgium and the Belgian Congo
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VOL. IV, No. 13 APRIL 1, 1944 NEWS FROM BELGIUM AND THE BELGIAN CONGO BELGIAN INFORMATION CENTER 6 3 0 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK, N. Y. CIRCLE 6 2450 AM material published In NEWS FROM BELGIUM may be reprinted without permission. Please send copies of material in which quotations are used to this office. THESE PERIOUICAL BULLETINS MAY BE OBTAINED FREE ON REQUEST. Anniversary Notice Three years ago the first issue of a foreign audience, the editor, as a for• News From Belgium was published. It eigner in these United States, is eager started off on a modest scale. Thanks to learn whether the small bridge he to the response of the American public, tries to build between his country, an it has grown to proportions the editor oppressed group of 8,500,000 people, never dreamed of. Over 100,000 copies and the mighty millions of Americans, of this booklet are printed each week. is constructed in such a way that it will They even appear to be read, at least permit both Americans and Belgians if we believe the diversified reactions to cross the natural differences and some artificially created misunder• of our correspondents. The majority standings that might exist between the of the readers seem to agree with two nations. Therefore, we will be the editorial comments; some consider grateful if on the occasion of this third them "mere drivel." Not even the Lord anniversary the readers of News From can please everybody and besides, who Belgium who feel themselves in a posi• would want to do so? tion to do so would express their con• A publication is as much the prop• structive criticisms. erty of the reader as of the editor. As at this time last year, the editor Reading a publication regularly is al• expresses the hope that this bulletin ready a form of consent, of complicity: may disappear as soon as possible, for to a certain extent it demands that the this would be the proof that news again reader should occasionally express his will be free in Belgium. agreement or his objections. Addressing —THE EDITOR. NEWS FROM BELC.ITM APEIL 1, 1944 "I Adorn the World, but I Despise It." Some time ago a young American, who left for amateurs. We have to make it up for some reason or other was unable to join ourselves. the army, was heard complaining about the The Golden Age of the dreamers, nature- fact that for the duration at least he couldn't lovers and globe-trotters was between 1500 see anything of the world. He said in dead and 1600. Christopher Columbus, as the earnest, "I am practically encaged in these locker-room song has it, "that navigatin, cal- United States." culatin, son-of-a gun, Colombo," unleashed Oh, wonderful cage, and how jealous something in millions of minds and hearts would be those millions of people in Europe from which we all still suffer. When Lind• and elsewhere who all their lives for religi• bergh crossed the Atlantic everyone was ous, political, linguistic, or simply economic elated: we, — all of us humans, — had done reasons are unable to move farther than 100 something the elements didn't want us to miles from their homes! But after all, Mr. do. It was glorious, but at the same time we Paul Morand wrote a book called Rien Que felt the earth was shrinking. In our subcon• La Terre, a title which throws the regrets of scious we understood that in our quest for the young American into the shade. "Noth• the truth we would soon no longer have the ing but the earth," says Mr. Morand, and excuse of going places to find out what other the globe's dimensions continue to become people had discovered. We saw that the so• smaller and narrower while our desires and lution for our problems was not any more ambitions are supposed to exceed its size to be found in the study of a diversified and shape. mankind but in ourselves. Now there is no place on earth which you can't reach in 60 The trouble with the world is that we identify ourselves with what we know. To hours. The fact that mappemondes do not keep our interest in life going we need mys• look global any more but have acquired the tery and excitement, — excitement arising shape of a trigonometrist's nightmare is but out of mystery. We have come to know this a diversion. The modern man is told that old world too well. There are scarcely even the world is a small, third-rate planet and a few corners left of which we do not have that we know all about it. good maps and surveys. Every school child All that started when Ptolemaeus, the is familiar with the shape of the earth. Greek, began making maps. Up to 1462 Everybody knows that except for a few re• they were still considered worthy of publi• treats in the woods along the Amazon, the cation, but real map-making and publishing world will soon look like a model village in developed only in the sixteenth century. It a nineteenth-century World's Fair. A few had nothing to do with any philosophical years ago when a daring writer and explorer preoccupation; it was just the answer to a wanted to partake of a genuine two-course need of the time. cannibal meal, the poor alleged cannibals, Antwerp, the "gathering-place of mer• although they did not want to offend him, chants of all nations," was at that time the were extremely embarrassed and were forc• economic center of Western Europe. Poets ed to serve him a piece of mutton instead. lauded it in exalted rhymes, foreign writers When the movie potentates want to show us and distinguished visitors praised it as the a 100% savage, they serve us the impressive greatest and richest of all European cities. anatomy of Johnny Weismuller, who is so As an illustration of the theory that art and highly civilized that he writes books about science need the background of a capitalis• the breast stroke. No, there is little "nature" tic society, one could not find any better [102} NEWS FROM BELGIUM APRIL 1, 1944 example. The rich merchants and finan• wise man must keep silent these days . ." ciers not only wanted to be entertained by He was honored by the bigot's suspicions the artists, they not only asked the painters and he probably belonged to a circle of in• to represent them and their ponderous fluential, highly cultured men who under• spouses on canvas, but they also expected stood that the conflicts of the sixteenth cen• the scientists to make life easier for them by tury were not to be reduced to dogmatic their discoveries or by cataloguing the rudi• quarrels but that the stake was the very dig• ments of scientific knowledge already exist• nity of the scientist, of the writer, of man. ing in certain realms of human endeavor. Somewhat disillusioned he chose as a motto Like the eighteenth century, the sixteenth for his crest, which represented a globe: "I is a period not so much of great creative ac• adorn it, but I despise it." tivity but of inventories and encyclopedic surveys. His claim to glory is that next to Merca• tor he was the greatest geographer of his One of the most urgent requirements of time. He was the first one to put together the international crowd that convened in the good maps already in circulation, to the Antwerp Exchange, the first one to be which he added several of his own inven• established in the world, was the need of tion, and to publish them in the "most ex• good maps of Europe, Africa and Asia. pensive volume of the sixteenth century," Travel was still a hazardous enterprise, dis• tances were poorly defined, errors were the Theatre of the World (1553), which manifold in the existing land and coast had three editions in Latin, one in Flemish, maps. A whole school of map-makers and several in French and German, — altogether engravers sprang up, the most famous of 38. The book contained 53 maps and cre• all being Mercator, whose projection of the ated a world-wide sensation. In 1570 he pub• globe has only recently been discarded for lished a number of additions to his great a more modern conception. They drew work. He was aided by Anna, his sister, who maps, they bought maps from the Italians, did the coloring of the maps, a job that was the Spaniards and the Portuguese. They re• generally entrusted to women by the pub• drew and reprinted them and sold them. lishers of those days. It had to be done by Among these sellers of maps was one hand in order not to obscure the lettering Abraham Ortelius, born in Antwerp in and the other details of the engraving. His 1527. He had latinized his inelegant name work is scientific and accurate and his com• of Wortel (root) or Ortel into a scholarly- mentaries on the regions represented are sounding version. By trade he was a mer• still of value. This atlas contains a map of chant. He saw a great deal of Europe and the Americas that reproduces the rather used to go twice a year from his home town fantastic ideas geographers had of that con• to the fairs of Frankfort, a voyage compar• tinent. Oddly enough. South America, which able to a transcontinental trip nowadays. was far better known, looks like a square, He was registered in the artists' union as while the outline of North America is sub• an "afzetter van kaarten," a vendor of maps.