Vandervelde
(b. Jan. 25, 1866, Ixelles, Belg.--d. Dec. 27, 1938, Brussels), Belgian statesman and a prominent figure in European
Socialism who served in Belgian coalition governments from 1914 to 1937 and was influential in the peace negotiations following World War I.Vandervelde joined the Belgian Workers' Party in 1889 and became a party leader. He entered Parliament as a Socialist in 1894 and played a leading role in the international Socialist congresses after 1900. In the years before World War I he was prominent in the Socialist agitation for universal suffrage, granted in Belgium in 1919. He was named minister of state in 1914 and served in the Cabinet throughout the war. In the
Paris Peace Conference treaty negotiations (1919-20), he gained inclusion of clauses favouring labour, including one advocating an eight-hour day; as minister of justice, he sponsored major penal reforms (1919).After the gains of the Workers' Party in the elections of 1925, he was named minister for foreign affairs in a Socialist-Catholic coalition government and helped negotiate the Pact of Locarno (1925) among Germany, Belgium, France, Great Britain, and Italy. He continued as foreign affairs minister in the first two years of Henri Jaspar's ministry but was criticized by opposition parties for advocating limitation of military service to six months and for his antimilitarist stance in foreign policy. He served as minister without portfolio (1935-36) and minister of public health (1936-37) before retiring to become a law professor at the Free University of Brussels.
Vandervelde's works include Le Collectivisme et l'évolution industrielle (1900; Collectivism and Industrial Evolution, 1907); Le Socialisme contre l'état (1918; Socialism Versus the State, 1919); and Le Parti Ouvrier Belge, 1885-1925 (1925; "The Belgian Workers' Party, 1885-1925").
Huysmans
(b. May 26, 1871, Bilzen, Belg.--d. Feb. 25, 1968, Antwerp), socialist writer and statesman, a leader of the moderate wing of the Flemish nationalist movement during the first decades of the 20th century, and prime minister of Belgium from 1946 to 1947.
Trained as a philologist, Huysmans taught at the collège at Ieper, Belg., the Atheneum at Ixelles, Belg., and the Université Nouvelle (French: "New University") in Brussels. From 1910 he served in the House of Representatives, first for Brussels and then for Antwerp, acting as secretary for the Second International based in Brussels (1905-22). In the years before World War I he wrote for several socialist newspapers, including Le Peuple, and after the war started the Flemish Volksgazet in Antwerp, where he helped form a Socialist Party branch and became the city's mayor (1933).
As minister of education (1925-27), Huysmans promoted teaching in Flemish in the Flemish provinces. After serving as president of the House of Representatives (1936-39), he fled the Nazi occupation (1940) to London, where he became vice chairman of the Belgian Parliamentary Consultative Committee. After the war he led a coalition ministry (1946-47) and served as minister of education (1947-49) in the succeeding ministry of Paul-Henri Spaak.
Huysman's writings include Soixante-quinze années de domination bourgeoise (1905; "Seventy-Five Years of Bourgeois Domination"), La Révolution de 1830 et le mouvement politique (1905), L'Affiliation des syndicats (1907; "The Consolidation of the Trade Unions"), Études sur les assurances sociales (1913; "Studies on Social Insurance"), and Quatre Types (1937; "Four Models").