The Belgian Government has not behaved courageously in the matter.
Besides declaring that it would not give an asylum to Communist refugees, requesting M. Hugo to leave Belgium, and getting a royal decree to expel him when he refused, it has iden- tified itself absolutely with the party of Versailles. The Minister of Justice said on Wednesday, in relation to the expulsion of M. Victor Hugo :—" The men who have been defeated in Paris are not politicians, but incendiaries and assassins. There are, though, persons more culpable still, namely, those who encouraged them. The persons who are most guilty in such matters are those intel- ]ectual malefactors who seek to agitate the people by seeking to sow discord between capital and labour." It is, of course, true that the leaders in Paris were guilty of the gross wickedness of setting great public buildings on fire and of murdering innocent hostages, but "incendiaries and assassins" properly mean men who do these wicked things from private motives, not as acts of mili- tary spoliation or revenge. Would the Belgian Government refuse the Marquis de Gallifet an asylum in Belgium for " assassinations " (in the Belgian sense) at the Arc de Triomphe, and on the Champs de Mars ? But perhaps we can hardly expect Ultramontane Belgium to be fair to any of the followers of a party some of whose class cruelly murdered a Roman. Catholic Archbishop and a number of distinguished priests.
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