Kaiser Phil

Given the axiomatic truth that Europe is All About Us, it's surprising that the latest act of ingratitude by the beastly Belgians has been greeted with so few Eyjafjallajökulls of moral indignation. Belgium, it will be recalled, was the first victim of Prussian expansionism in the First World War, and many were the proto-Johnsonian stories of skewered nuns and cannibalised schoolchildren in the free and cantankerous British press. Not from any sordid materialistic motivation did Englishmen flock to the trenches, but solely in order to save little Belgium from the imperialistic depredations of the German Empire, whose ambitions at that time had reached depths of megalomaniacal depravity exceeded only by those of modern Brussels, Adolf Hitler and Jeremy Corbyn. Doubtless in tribute to our plucky little servicemen, and not at all from any fear of being strung by their necks from a bridge in Bruges, in 1920 the Belgian royal family emulated some migrants in London and expunged all trace of German heritage from its arms and title, which the present king has had the temerity to restore. Even the motto, which means unity makes strength, has been translated into Dutch and German, thereby making it dangerously susceptible to being ripped from its context and taken as referring to something other than the United Kingdom. Does no-one respect the lessons of history?