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Newspaper Page Text
BUSY LITTLE COUNTRIES All of us, more or less, are fas cinated by the glamor of bigness, We are proud to be inhabitants of great countries like the United States or Great Britain coun tries with vast resources and mil lions of population and mighty navies countries that are "world powers." But after all, one sometimes wonders whether the little coun tries are not in happier case; the little .countries that are maintain-' ' ed as buffer states, or by mutual agreement because of the jealous ies of the big nations. At one blow the little countries 4 are relieved of the tremendous ex pense of big armies and navies. All government is "conducted on , a simpler and more economical scale. The people have more time for industry and the arts. Purely a theory? Well, let's lo&k into it. There is Belgium, for instance, which Germany could gobble tomorrow if it choose. Belgium is one vast workshop. On every hand the sky is rendered murky by clouds of smoke that come from huge factories. The little country is rich. Or take Denmark, another land that Germany 'could absorb if it chooseTDenmark is one immense market garden and dairy farm. The making of butter and cheese rhas become a science. The peo ple are prosperous. Nor Is the prosperity, merely a financial and commercial one. The arts arejnot neglected. Bel gium has produced in Maurice E" ' " ''' - 1 zr--r ( JULY-., Vtw CCHSER VP' S A3 N y herb c6mg:s JL ik Materlinck, one o the world's greatest ntodern dramatists .and essayists. -Emile Verhae'ren is admittedly the greatest lyric.poet now using the trench tongue. Little Denmark keeps up her end of it by producing in Geforge Brandes, the greatest living critic of literature. ,. So you see, these- little coun tries are really hjg big with orosoeritv. bie' with productions- of hand and irairt. . Firecrackers were invented for the Chincs.e to celebrate the Chi nese New iYerfrvyith, But a long "dead and injured" roll never worries. ' the- Chinese much