Last September I had occasion to refer, in an Irish paper, to certain impressions a recent stay in Belgium had left in my memory. At that time Belgians were particularly interested in the so-called Louvain Controversy, which centred round a Latin inscription that the American architect of the New Library in Louvain, with singular lack of restraint, desired to impose on the building to the confusion of all wicked Germans and to the greater glory of all good Americans. The grandiloquent inscription was meant to crown his labours on this field of Flanders ten years after the close of the Great War. I noted some extraordinary features in the reactions of Belgian public opinion in this connection. The controversy, I had then reason to believe, was at an end. I was mistaken. According to the latest information from Belgium, the inglorious struggle has been renewed, to the disgust, we may be sure, of all true lovers of culture, not only in Belgium, but in America and the world over. One would like to know more of the reactions of public opinion in America on the issue that has quite recently been the subject of legal proceedings in Louvain, which have resulted in the American plaintiff being non-suited. But to come back to my own impressions of Belgium last year.

How Belgium has changed with the times. What, no doubt, will especially strike the traveller, who has known Flanders before the War, will be the rapid transformation that has taken place, not merely in the face of the country but in the very mind and spirit of the people. True, Bruges remains unchanged. Under the shadow of her belfry, lulled with sounds of sweetest melody, dreaming only of the past and heedless of the future, she slumbers to-day as peacefully as ever.