Above the Battle
fertile in Europe in the harvests of the spirit. From it arose the art of modern painting, spread throughout the world by the school of the van Eycks at the time of the Renaissance. From it arose the art of modern music, of that polyphony which thrilled through France, Germany, and Italy for nearly two centuries. From it, too, came the superb poetic efflorescence of our times; and the two writers who most brilliantly represent French literature in the world, Maeterlinck and Verhaeren, are Belgian. They are the people who have suffered most and have borne their sufferings most bravely and cheerfully; the martyr-people of Philip II and of Kaiser Wilhelm; and they are the people of Rubens, the people of Kermesses and of Till Ulenspiegel.
He who knows the amazing epic re-told by Charles de Coster: The heroic, joyous, and glorious adventures of Ulenspiegel and Lamme Goedjak, those two Flemish worthies who might take their places side by side with the immortal Don Quixote and his Sancho Panza—he who has seen that dauntless spirit at work, rough and facetious, rebellious by nature, always offending the established powers, running the
gauntlet of all trials and hardships, and emerg-
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