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Show September, .1830." I could not ask for a more authoritative corroboration of my view that the Lion Mound is a monument to Dutch megalomania without with-out any reference to Britons or Belgians Bel-gians whatever. Certainly the Belgians Bel-gians would never have thought of erecting such a memorial to themselves, and ns to this country, it is not its way. It is quite clear, then, that the mere reversal of the lion's position affords no adequate solution to the problem of satisfying those French sentiments which M. Snintine expressed 90 years ago, and which I do not doubt are still entertained. Once the matter is taken into consideration, there can be no dispute dis-pute that the position and the pose of the lion are offensive and provocative to the French people, who, on three historic occasions in less than a cen-Vjry, cen-Vjry, have contributed of their best and bravest to the saving of Belgian independence. EVERY visitor to tlie field of Waterloo knows the Lion Mound, but not one in a thousand thou-sand is acquainted with its true history, and the great majority of British Brit-ish tourists at least regard it as the British Lion. In 182!), shortly after its erection, a Frencli visitor named Saintine described it as "the Belgic Lion looking towards and apparently threatening France." That description seems not to have been forgotten, and probably lies at the root of the suggestion sug-gestion just made in Brussels lo turn the lion round so that tlie threat it needs a very lively imagination to see any at all in the pose may be diverted divert-ed from France in the direction of Holland, writes Demetrius C. Boulger in the Graphic. What was the origin of the mound and the lion? In the first place, the 1 animal represented is neither a British Brit-ish nor a Belgic emblem ; it is thj Dutch lion, and somewhere in a corner, if it has not been obliterated, will be found, I imagine, tlie motto of Nassau-Orange, Nassau-Orange, "Je Maiutiendrai." Whatever is done with it, then, the susceptibilities susceptibil-ities of neither Belgians nor British are involved. The British government have certainly no inherited claim to a voice in whatever solution may be adopted. It is not their concern. How the Mound Was Built. In 182G William I of the Netherlands, the great-grandfather of the present Queen Wilhelmina and one of the most obstinate personages to be found in the whole range of history, conceived that i the field of Waterloo required a memorial to establish the heroism of his eldest son, who had received a .wo 'nd on the occasion. The king was actuated" 'entirely by dynastic considerations, consid-erations, unless he .i'so wished to provide pro-vide the foundries of Cockeriil, in which he was the largest shareholder, with a profitable commission. At all events It is quite clear that the Belgian Bel-gian people took no interest or part in the matter, which was decided by a vote of the states-general at The Hague. The vote being passed, the governments of Britain and Prussia were then invited to make a contribution contribu-tion to the memorial. They complied to a certain limited extent, the British consenting, for their part, to the removal re-moval of certain French cannon in Wellington's Belgian fortresses in order or-der to provide the material for the proposed lion. By that time William had decided on the form of the memorial. It was to be the erection of an enormous mound some 200 feet above the crest of Mont St. Jean, at the spot where his son, the prince of Orange, had been wounded, wound-ed, the mound to be crovned by the Lion of the Netherlands. The clay for the mound was brought from the steep sides of the famous "sunken road." which disappeared in the process, by women of the district, who were paid at the rate of half a franc a basket, and the site marked by Wellington's tree was included within the radius of the elevation so that when the duke revisited re-visited the scene in 1829 with his daughter-in-law, Lady Douro, he made the expressive comment, "My battlefield battle-field has been spoilt." Legend of the Lion's Tail. The memorial, completed in 1828, had been in existence two years when the Belgian revolution broke out in August, 1830. A year later a French army advanced to Louvaln to repel a Dutch invasion. It was said that some of the French corps in that advance crossed the field and took offense, not at the mound or the lion, but at tlie shape of its tail, which, erect in the air, seemed to express defiance! The story went on to say that in their wrath they broke off the tail, and that the complaisant Belgians supplied the lion with a new one, no longer erect, but made gracefully dependent. I went to considerable pains in 1901 to show that this legend could have no real basis, because tlie contemporary drawings In the Brussels Museum of Prints showed the lion being hoisted into its position witli the tail in precisely pre-cisely the same form as it wears today. to-day. There is no evidence of any change having been made at that time 01- any other. In December. 1832. the French army rendered a second signal service to the Belgian people by tlie siege and capture cap-ture of the Antwerp citadel, and once more a French regiment traversed the scene without doing any damage. A proposal was then made in the Belgian chamber by a patriotic leader. M. Gen-debien. Gen-debien. to the effect that the national na-tional gratitude should lie evinced by the removal of the lion monument altogether. al-together. Ur called it. anil justly, as has been shown, "the hateful emblem of tlie despotism and violence which made us subject for 1." years to the humiliating yoke which we cast off in |
