The Low Countries

In this edition we want to deal with some less obvious facets of the Great War. What was the lot of the many hundreds of thousands of refugees who ended up in the Netherlands and Great Britain in the autumn of 1914? What role did the Knight-King Albert I and his wife Queen Elisabeth play in the mythologization of "la Belgique sanglante et martyre" and "Gallant Little Belgium"? How did occupied Belgium fare? We examine lieux de mémoire like the poppy, the Menin Gate in Ypres, war songs and the landscape - the last witness. What was the effect on the Netherlands of not experiencing the First…