L'activité politique à Liège pendant la guerre 1914-1918.

Political Activities At Liege Under The German Occupation (1914-18): It was a fairly generally held view that under the German occupation, there was no important political activity. Actually it is just not true that the war was merely a political parenthesis in the occupied country. At Liège, the political organisations - in collaboration with the National Committee for Food and Help - were in charge of the feeding of the population and, for that very reason, survived. But they did not just survive, they worked for the future, for a new political future : the divergent factions of the catholics (conservative and progressive) amalgamated. The socialists were planning agitation. This helps to explain why, immediately after the liberation of the country, they were able to start again. This goes not only for Liège : it was a general phenomenon. In Brussels, the central organisation of the Committee for Food and Help organised political discussions on the highest level (with a view to the post-war situation). There was even a preparation of a modified constitution. And one is not far wrong in claiming that the first post-war Cabinet, the one which came into existence at Lophem, was actually a cabinet comprised of the National Committee members.