Two Devoted Nations
Reading edition
By MAURICE MAETERLINCK
The subjoined letter, dedicated by the Belgian writer to stricken Poland, was received on July 12, 1915, by the Polish Relief Committee of New York, of which Mme. Marcella Sembrich is President.
In the Name of Belgium I Bring the Homage of a Martyred Nation to the Nation Crucified:
Of all the people engaged in this frightful war, Poland and Belgium will have suffered most, and we must add (though all the horrors of war are most revolting) they will have suffered most innocently. They are two victims of their innocence and grandeur of soul.
In misfortune and in glory their fates are the same. One, in sacrificing herself wholly to a cult, to an unparalleled passion for honor, has by breaking the first blow of barbarous invasion probably saved Europe, just as the other, the older sister, in grief and heroism several centuries ago saved Europe many times.
They are now joined forever in the memory of men. Across the combats and the sorrows which they are now enduring their hands meet in the same sacrifice, in the same invincible hope. Today these countries are but ruins. Nothing remains of them. They appear to be dead. But we, who are their sons and who know them as we know our mother, we know, we feel in our hearts, that they were never more alive, never purer, never more beautiful.
After having offered to the world a great example of pride, of abnegation, of heroism, they are again giving to it a deeper lesson, a more valuable, a more efficacious one. They are proving that no misfortune counts, that nothing is lost while the soul does not abdicate. The powers of darkness will never prevail against the forces of light and love that are leading humanity towards the heights which victory is already making clear to us on the horizon.